The rule is the solution to the [Secretary Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem).
The problem is this: you’re interviewing applicants for a secretary position. You have a certain number of applicants, say 100. After interviewing a candidate you can either hire them or let them go, but once you let them go you can’t decide to interview the again or hire them, even if they were better than every other applicant.
The problem is to find an optimal method of hiring the best applicant. As it turns out, from a probability perspective, the best approach is to let first 37% of the candidates go (after interviewing them of course), and then keep interviewing and hire the first candidate who is better than all previous candidates. Statistically speaking, this gives you the best chance of hiring the best candidate.
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