Optimal stopping in a two-sided secretary problem

dc.creatorEriksson, Kimmo
dc.creatorSjostrand, Jonas
dc.creatorStrimling, Pontus
dc.date2004-11-09
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T05:14:09Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T05:14:09Z
dc.descriptionIn the "secretary problem", well-known in the theory of optimal stopping, an employer is about to interview a maximum of N secretaries about which she has no prior information. Chow et al. proved that with an optimal strategy the expected rank of the chosen secretary tends to approximately 3.87. We study a two-sided game-theoretic version of this optimal stopping problem, where men search for a woman to marry at the same time as women search for a man to marry. We find that in the unique subgame perfect equilibrium, the expected rank grows as the square root of N and that, surprisingly, the leading coefficient is exactly 1. We also discuss some possible variations.
dc.description16 pages
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/math/0411212
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/math/0411212
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/73168
dc.subjectCombinatorics
dc.subject91B40; 91A15, 91B08
dc.titleOptimal stopping in a two-sided secretary problem
dc.typetext

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