Matt Parker
speaker
278 appearances
8 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2010
last heard 8 Jul
Matt Parker’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And at what point do you stop rejecting and you start trying?
choosing.
And that is called the optimal stopping problem.
And mathematically, we know if you want to get the best person on average, you need to look at the total number of people you will date across your life.
You then calculate the square root of that number of people.
And so let's say you were going to date 100 people in your life.
Your square root is 10.
You then go through that first 10 people and you automatically reject them.
But you keep track.
I mean, maybe log them in a spreadsheet as to who was the best.
And then once you've gone through that, you then keep dating people until you meet someone who is as good as or better than anyone you saw in your original sample as such.
And that mathematically will give you the best result on average.
You're absolutely correct.
I mean, as always, a mathematical model is only as good as the starting assumptions, how many things you factor in and how accurate you are at factoring those in.
And so I wouldn't recommend living life following this down to the algorithm to clinically locate the person you have then calculated to be your best partner.
But it is a reasonably good guide.
Research seems to show that people on average settle down too soon.
Matt Parker.
We have no idea where US letter size came from.
Metres are vastly superior to inches.
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