4 ms·
A simplified heuristic[0] for this for those interested in personal applications: it works out that you should exploit the best opportunity you come across once
by throwpoaster 2y ago
A simplified heuristic[0] for this for those interested in personal applications: it works out that you should exploit the best opportunity you come across once you’ve explored about 37% of the search space.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
- schneems 2y agoWith the caveat that this number is for situations where you cannot backtrack (choose a previously seen option that isn’t the current one). There is a great book Algorithms to Live by that goes over this explore/exploit problem and more. I recommend it.
- Y_Y 2y agoI second that recommendation. There's some really good discussion on when and how to apply heuristics like this to real-life decisions.
- GuB-42 2y agoNote that it is if you only want the best candidate, all others being equally bad. If, instead, you are content with just a "good" candidate to avoid having to pick a terrible one, then a proposed solution is for the cutoff to be sqrt(n), where n is the number of candidates. See "Cardinal payoff variant" in the Wikipedia page.