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134 sats \ 6 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3 Apr \ on: Mathematicians suggest the "37% rule" for your life's biggest decisions (2022) science
That's..... interesting. I've never heard of this rule. I wonder what are the underlying probabilistic features of decision making that drive this rule of thumb. It must be some process of learning about the underlying mean and variance of the quality distribution of options.
I don't think I've ever consciously implemented this idea.... but I can't even really think of situations where i gave myself a fixed period of time to make a decision out of many potential options either...
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Yep so you're using the first 37% of trials to sample the distribution basically
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Yeah. It's quite simplistic.
It assumes the choices can be ranked, i.e. you can clearly say one choice is better than the other. Also, you'd have to be sure you can perfectly time each time a choice is offered to you. Also, you cannot go back on an initial decision.
To buy a house:
- how do you decide which house is better than the other? Quite subjective. And your subjectiveness will be influenced by outside factors (government asking a friendly journalist to say rates are going up/down) that are time-dependent.
- you might find 37 houses on the market during the first 37 days, but only 3 during the next 63.
- you could change your mind and contact a previous house owner to ask if the house is still available.
- etc...
But all in all, it's just a fun number to highlight that you shouldn't FOMO and take your time to make a decision.
Luckily, I did not apply that formula when picking who to marry... wonder if she will ask tonight if I applied this rule when starting to date her~~
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In real life you probably won't see 37 or 100 houses
10 is more realistic ... after seeing 3.7 or 4 homes you are ready to take the plunge
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1/e = 0.37
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Natural log e
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