DailyDirt: Celebrating Valentine's Day... Or Not

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some folks say romance is dead, but maybe it's just in a deep meditative trance. In any case, it's almost that time of year again when chocolates and flowers and possibly awkward marriage proposals are being considered. For the romantic souls, this is an annual tradition that shouldn't be missed. For the more cynical, it's just another commercial holiday to boost sales of various pink-heart themed items.

• The Secretary Problem (aka the Marriage Problem) is a challenge to find an optimization strategy for the situation of having to choose the most satisfactory option among a series of candidates -- without being able to return to a previous candidate and once a candidate is chosen the decision is final. Mathematician Martin Gardner states that the optimal solution is to interview/date the first 36.8% of candidates, and then as soon as you encounter a candidate that appears better than that first group, you hire/marry that person (which may result in getting stuck with the last candidate). QED. Very romantic, yes? [url]
• If you're following the solution to the Secretary Problem, you might want to employ another technique when you've decided. Forget love potions, just answer a few dozen questions with a potential partner and then stare into her eyes for 4 minutes. [url]
• The commercial Anti-Valentine's Day is actually November 11th -- aka Singles Day. It's the world's biggest online retail sales day that dates back to about 1993, and it's really big in China. [url]

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Filed Under: love, martin gardner, math, optimization, psychology, retail holiday, romance, secretary problem, singles day, valentine's day