A Monthly Math Morsel

Math is fundamental to how everything in the world works, from how buildings and other infrastructure should be built to how governments decide to be maximally efficient in improving citizens’ lives. Perhaps we as students cannot relate to those, but math is everywhere in our daily lives, always guiding our decision-making. A Monthly Math Morsel aims to point out unique ways in which math can manifest in a student’s life, emphasizing the important role mathematics plays in humanity.

Scenario

You are a multi-time champion of the International Trivia Competition and need to find a partner this year. After advertising this opportunity on LinkedIn, you’re surprised to find that 100 people applied. You decide to hold a selection process, in which you conduct an interview with each applicant and score them based on their performance on answering 25 extremely difficult trivia questions. For purposes of this scenario, you must either accept or reject each applicant after the interview and cannot return to them after you rejected them. In order to get the best partner, how would you go about this?

Answer

It is in your best interest to employ the 37% principle. By selecting the best in the first 37% (i.e. first 37 applicants), they will be used as a standard for the remaining 63% (i.e. remaining 63 applicants). No applicant in the first 37% will be selected. Instead, the next applicant in the remaining 63% that is close to that standard, or even better, should be hired.

Mathematicians find that using this strategy, chances of finding the best possible applicant, even if they are inferior to the sample from the 37%, is at a whopping 81%.

Hope you found this week’s Monthly Math Morsel interesting! See you next month!