How do you pick the perfect partner?

So let’s say you’re actually pretty good at online dating. You have a great bio, and professional pictures were taken and you get a decent amount of matches. (Yay, go you!)

But the question arises of how do you then convert that success into longer-term happiness and in particular, how do you decide when is the right time to settle down? After all, there are so many options to choose from right?

Now generally it’s not advisable to just cash in and marry the first person that comes along and shows you any interest at all.

But equally, you don’t really want to leave it too long. So the question is then how do you know when it’s the right time to settle down, given all the people that you could date in your lifetime?

We can use mathematics to help us out here called optimal stopping theory.

Okay. So let’s imagine that you start dating when you’re 17. And ideally, you’d like to be married by the time that you’re 30 and there’s a number of people that…