When to stop -- a cardinal secretary search experiment (Q826903)

The authors consider the cardinal secretary search problem, which confronts the decision maker with more or less candidates who have identically and independently distributed values and appear successively in a random order without recall of earlier candidates. Specifically, they compare experimentally observed aspirations with optimal ones for different numbers of (remaining) candidates and methods of experimental choice elicitation: ``hot'' collects play data, ``warm'' asks for an acceptance threshold before confronting the next candidate, and ``cold'' for a complete profile of trial-specific acceptance thresholds. Their findings show that search differs from benchmark behavior.