<i>“I’m a mathematician and therefore biased, but this result literally blows my mind,” Fry wrote. “Have three months to find somewhere to live? Reject everything in the first month and then pick the next house that comes along that is your favorite so far. Hiring an assistant? Reject the first 37 percent of candidates and then give the job to the next one who you prefer above all others.”</i><p>...except that the starting conditions are that you have <i>n</i> candidates/options for a decision, you consider in random order, and then you have o accept or reject each one before examining the next, plus no backtracks.<p>How often do these conditions obtain in real life? If you're dating, it's unlikely you know what your total number of future partners will be - even if you're religious and just want to be with one person for ever, you necessarily conceive of courting more than one person (since you might be rejected by <i>them</i>). For hiring for a job or purchasing a house, why would you make a final decision on each candidate before looking at any others?<p>The math is interesting and this is surely a useful heuristic for some situations, but (like much pop-math writing) the effort to make it cool and relevant backfires because the constraints seem arbitrary and divorced from real world experience.