06-22-2006

37% Rule: A Shortcut for Decision Making

I ran across an interesting article via populicio.us recently about the mathematics of evaluating options and making optimal decisions. The article offers the following handy heuristic and details the math used to derive it:

At the British Psychological Society’s conference in April 1997, on Dr Peter Todd, of the Max Planck Institute in Munich, spoke about the best (optimal) strategy for finding a partner. He also drew a parallel with the employer trying to find a suitable new employee from a range of applicants, and quoted the 37% rule. Once you have seen 37% of the application forms, “a coherent picture of the ideal employee is built up and the next person to fulfil these criteria gets the job”.

Posted by Matt in business, general, lifehacks | RSS 2.0

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