A practical strategy for secretary problem

YANG Cheng, LUO Xu-bin, CHEN Bin

Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice ›› 2012, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (7) : 1525-1530.

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Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice ›› 2012, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (7) : 1525-1530. DOI: 10.12011/1000-6788(2012)7-1525

A practical strategy for secretary problem

  • YANG Cheng, LUO Xu-bin, CHEN Bin
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Abstract

Cut-off rule is the most common approach for solving the secretary problem (SP). Most previous work assumes fixed benchmark used in an application and does not give quantitative analysis of the relationship between the threshold and the benchmark. In this paper we show the impacts of the threshold and benchmark on the expected ranking of the obtained results, pointing out that the frame of reference in solving the SP is more important than the decision-making time. We propose a practical solution based on socrates' trichotomy for the SP with less than 100 candidates. This solution takes the first one-third of the candidates as the sample set and applies flexible benchmark——from the first to the third one when examining the rest of the candidates. The method is simple and practical. And simulation shows that the average performance of our solution is very close (95%) to the best theoretical solution.

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secretary problem / cut-off rule / socrates' trichotomy / dynamic benchmark

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YANG Cheng , LUO Xu-bin , CHEN Bin. A practical strategy for secretary problem. Systems Engineering - Theory & Practice, 2012, 32(7): 1525-1530 https://doi.org/10.12011/1000-6788(2012)7-1525

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