The 37% Rule Of Life

The 37% Rule is by far one of the most interesting and mathematically backed solution to most of our problems. I’m leaving the math proof out of this article, but if you really want get in depth and understand why this works, feel free to send a mail to the address below. Before I dive right into the 37% Rule of Life, I would like to talk about a common problem and how this rule helps in finding a solution.

The Problem

Imagine you’re hiring for a position in your company and you have 100 applicants. Yes, you read that right. It’s 100 job seekers competing for 1 open position. This should not be surprising if you’re from India. We have been in situations like this before and will be in the near future as well.

You have planned to interview all the applicants and would like to choose the best candidate for the job. For every interview, you can choose to either select the applicant or reject them. Once you reject an applicant, you cannot get back to him at any cost. So the question is, how do you maximize your chances of finding the most apt person for this job?

This is a common scenario in optimal stopping theory, a field of mathematics, and this problem is known as “The Secretary Problem”.

The Solution

The solution for the above problem relies in defining a stopping rule, which is basically an explore vs exploit corundum. This rule suggests the interviewer to reject the first 'r' applicants and chose the best amongst them. Let’s call the best candidate from the rejected list ‘M’. Now, from r+1 to N(N=100 here), select the first candidate who’s better than M.

But how do we know the value of ‘r’? That’s where math comes into picture and gives you this magic number “37”. Thus, in our case, the interviewer should reject the first 37 candidates while choosing the best amongst them and keeping him/her as a benchmark. From the 38th candidate, select the one who has outperformed the chose candidate and you’ve solved the problem.

But but.. we don’t face this problem everyday

True, in real life we don’t come across this problem everyday. But that’s not the context of this article. Let’s look a little deeper into the solution and understand what it coveys.

• Although 37 is the mathematically backed number, you don’t always have to rely on this. The solution simply asks you to explore/experiment for about a 1/3 of your time and then commit to whatever best comes later.
• In the above problem, we have a fixed number N=100 hence it was easy to find r and determine the best candidate but for many problems in life you don’t have a numerical value to experiment. This is where you’ve to bound your problem to a certain range. Could be range of time, range of numbers or anything. Once you define a range, you can use the 37% rule to your advantage.

Strategic Dating: A Real Life Example

Let’s say you wish to find a perfect partner and you’re open to dating now. But how do you find your best fit? Well, once again the 37% rule.

Assuming you’re 18 years old and you wish to date until you’re 40. The solution asks you to explore your match by dating till you’re 26 and then commit to the best one you find after this. Yes, it might sound a bit odd and maybe funny even but there are scientists who argue this has worked for them.

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