A woman is going on blind dates with 100 men.
She sees them one at a time and goes on only one date with each. (Dating several people at once, keeping a pool of options, isn't allowed.)
Assume she is so attractive that every man proposes to her.
If she turns down a proposal, her relationship with that man is over for good, and she moves straight on to a date with the next man.
If she accepts, all the dating ends there.
Accept too early, and she misses the chance to meet a better husband.
Accept too late, and her options keep shrinking until only men who are worse than the ones she has already met are left.
When should she stop searching and accept a proposal to end up with the best possible husband?
For the optimal stopping problem, the answer has been proven to be 37%.
That is, she just meets the first 37 men and turns down their proposals. This is a phase for setting a kind of standard.
From the dates after that, she chooses the first man who is better than all the men before him.
If she lowers her sights and settles for a man in the top few percent instead of the very best, this 37% figure gets lower.
For example, if she wants a husband in the top 10%, she just meets the first 14 men and turns them down, then picks the first man after that who is the best so far.
Also, if she applies this strategy to find the very best husband, the probability that she actually finds him is 37%,
but if her goal was to find someone in the top 10%, her success rate with this strategy is as high as 85%.
Naturally, the more she lowers her sights, the higher the success rate.
Of course, it's hard to apply this to reality as it is.
The biggest gap from reality is that you can't score how good a husband someone would be from a single date.
One date isn't enough to figure out the other person, and on top of that you don't know yourself well, and both of you keep changing.
To begin with, people can't be scored.
You also don't know the size of the pool. How would I know whether I can meet 100 people or only 20?
Still, here is what we can take away.
First, meeting someone young and going straight to marriage without ever meeting anyone else may be romantic, but it may also be a regrettable choice.
Second, the only question that can tell you whether choosing someone is the wrong answer is:
"Isn't this still the best one among all the men I've met so far?"
If the answer is yes, you never have to regret it.