= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Elo comments on The application of the secretary problem to real life dating - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (44)
By changing the strategy from "first candidate better than the ones seen in the first n/e" to anything else, you lose all the rigorous mathematical backing that made the secretary problem cool in the first place. Is your solution optimal? Near-optimal? Who knows; it depends on your utility function and the distribution of candidates, and probably involves ugly integrals with no closed-form solution.
The whole point of the secretary problem is that a very precise way of stating the problem has a cool mathematical answer (the n/e strategy). But this precise statement of the problem is almost always useless in practice, so there's very little insight gained.
Update: yes; secretary problem has a cool and clean mathematical "next bestest candidate after 1/e trials" solution. Real life is a lot more complicated. if you work off that solution it has a 1/e chance of selecting the last candidate. which personally is atrocious odds to be playing around with. Considering the above mentioned opportunity cost ticking-time race, I need better odds than that. even if it sacrifices my chances of finding the best candidate.
if you are at the 1/e*n point and you have passed the best candidate you will end up at the last candidate. If you have any suspicion that you have passed the best (or very good candidates) maybe its time to change your rule to select the best candidate excluding one known candidate. or (again) the candidate that is better than 90% of existing trials.