Decision Theory – Can the ‘Secretary Problem’ Find the Worst Candidate?

decision-theory

As you know, we use the "Secretary Problem" to choose the single best candidate. Now I would like to know can we use this rule to find the worst candidate, too? If yes, how to accomplish this?

Best Answer

Yes.

The algorithm simply finds the participant who is optimal according to some property, but does not care what that property means (as long as it defines an ordering relation on the candidates). Changing that property from being good to being bad (or whatever else) is just a definition without algorithmic relevance.

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