The Application of Optimal Stopping Theory for Finding a Rental Apartment
The 37% rule, infamously known as the “Dating rule” is a purely probabilistic and statistical theory, that has its root in a much broader mathematical theory called optimal stopping theory.
The practical applications and implications of this theory are limitless. It could be applied to various everyday scenarios.
In the book “Algorithms to live by”, this specific use case of finding a place to rent is discussed as a scenario for applying this theory. When I read the book 4 years ago, this sparked my interest in developing an algorithm around it and testing it in real life.
Since then, I always applied this algorithm while searching for a flat to rent. Sometimes more rigorously, other times a bit loosely. But irrespectively, it had always saved a lot of time for me and on some rare occasions even money, rather than apartment-hunting without a plan.
It became more useful when I moved to a city on a different continent that has a critical housing crisis, and the rental market couldn’t keep up with the demand. Where a quick win is the difference between saving and losing a lot of money and time in the search efforts.
