There's a woman who is going to go on blind dates with 100 men.
She sees them one at a time and goes on exactly one date with each. (No keeping several on the hook at once.)
And let's assume she's so attractive that every single man proposes.
If she turns down a proposal, things with that man are over for good. She immediately moves on to a date with the next one.
If she accepts a proposal, all the dates end right there.
Accept too early and she misses the chance to meet a better husband.
But accept too late and her options keep shrinking, until all that's left are worse prospects than the men she has already met.
When should she stop looking and accept a proposal in order to land the best husband?
In the optimal stopping problem, the answer has been proven to be 37%.
That is: she just meets the first 37 men and turns them all down. A stage for setting a benchmark, of sorts.
Then, from the dates after that, if a man comes along who's better than everyone before him, she picks him.
If she isn't after the very best husband but lowers her standards to, say, a man in the top few percent, that 37% figure drops.
For example, if she's aiming for a husband in the top 10%, she just meets the first 14 men and turns them down, and after that picks the first man who is better than any she's met so far.
Also, when she applies this strategy aiming for the very best husband, the probability that she actually ends up with the best is 37%.
If the goal was the top 10%, applying the strategy gives a success rate of 85%.
Naturally, the lower the bar, the higher the odds of success.
Of course, it's hard to apply this directly in real life.
For one, the biggest gap with reality is that you can't score how good a husband someone would be from a single date.
One date isn't enough to read someone, you often don't know yourself that well either, and both of you keep changing.
People can't be scored in the first place.
And you don't know the size of the population either. How would I know whether I get to meet 100 people or only 20?
Still, if there's something to take away.
One is that meeting someone young and going straight to marriage without ever dating anyone else may be romantic, but it might also be a choice you come to regret.
The second is that when you've chosen someone, the only question that can tell you whether it's the wrong answer is:
"Still, isn't he the best of all the men I've met so far?"
If the answer is yes, you never have to regret it.