My understanding of the optimal stopping problem is that you basically take a sample that's approximately N/e, and then you accept the first candidate that exce

My understanding of the optimal stopping problem is that you basically take a sample that's approximately N/e, and then you accept the first candidate that exceeds the scores of the members in that sample, or you accept the last candidate, regardless of their score. I think the key thing is that a priori you don't know what the spectrum of quality is in the initial set. You're basing "the bar" on what you've just seen. It's like dating, you might pass on some great people before you realize what the dating pool really looks like.