I, like many others, used to have the attitude that "puzzles are for interviews". But recently, I have started seeing that there can be practical applications f

I, like many others, used to have the attitude that "puzzles are for interviews". But recently, I have started seeing that there can be practical applications for seemingly academic ideas. For example, I know a proprietary trader who uses a concept similar to this from the field of Optimal Stopping for his trading system exclusively, i.e., his entire trading strategy, managing tens of millions of dollars for a big bank, is basically an application of Optimal Stopping to the markets!