I've written about the Secretary's Problem before. Suppose you are in the look-out for a piece of real estate. Different gurus have a different approach towards buying the house, but the most optimal solution is to first determine when you will need to move into your new house and then spend about 37% of that time looking at homes without committing to any purchase. The purpose of this search phase is to actually get acquainted with the range of properties that are on sale and give you a better idea of your own personal preferences. So if you have 100 days to search for a house, spend 37 days just shopping around without making a commitment. ( 37% being 100% divided by e where e is the natural number at 2.718 ) In practice, you need to be strong-willed to adopt this approach because real estate agents will try ......