This paper is composed of two related parts. In the first, we present a dynamic programming procedure for finding optimal policies for a class of sequential search problems that includes the well-known secretary problem. In the second, we propose a stochastic model of choice behavior for this...

Let X1,X2,… be independent random variables observed sequentially and such that X1,…,Xθ−1 have a common probability density p0, while Xθ,Xθ+1,… are all distributed according to p1≠p0. It is assumed that p0 and p1 are known, but the time change θ∈Z+ is unknown and the goal is to...