Algorithms to Live By

I’ve been reading through the book Algorithms to Live By, and I thought it would be interesting to summarize or think of an application for each chapter since the book is about how algorithms influence or can be used in everyday decisions. The first chapter is about the Optimal Stopping problem, which deals with deciding when to, well stop, given a decision that costs something over time. One example in the book is about hiring a secretary, or some other job candidate. According to the math, if you want to find the top candidate, you should reject the first 37% applicants in order to establish a baseline for the candidate quality, then accept the first candidate that outperforms the baseline. ...