Decoding Feynman’s Math for Choosing a Restaurant While Traveling
5 verified3 unconfirmed
Researchers have deciphered handwritten notes by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman to reveal a mathematical solution to the dilemma of whether to try a new restaurant or revisit a favorite while on holiday. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was prompted by a lunch Feynman shared with a friend in the 1970s. Feynman devised a solution to what mathematicians call a “stopping problem,” but his scrawled notes remained unintelligible for decades. A team of scientists managed to reconstruct his original problem and reframed it as choosing among restaurants over a fixed number of nights. The researchers also tested real human behavior by surveying more than 2,500 people online. They found that while participants did not use Feynman’s exact optimal strategy, they employed a simpler approximation that produced nearly as good results.
What’s verified
Physicist Richard Feynman created a mathematical solution to a restaurant-dining dilemma in the 1970s, but his handwritten notes were not understood until recently.
Researchers deciphered the notes and published their findings in the June 2 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The solution involves calculating a declining threshold: the fewer nights remain in a trip, the lower the quality standard needed to stop searching.
The team recruited more than 2,500 participants in an online test of how people actually make such decisions.
Participants did not follow the optimal strategy but used a simpler heuristic that approximated it.
Not yet confirmed
One source reports that Feynman’s lunch companion, Ralph Leighton, was debating whether to stick with his favorite ginger chicken dish at a Thai restaurant in California, which sparked the problem.
The same source states that participants’ threshold decreased linearly with the proportion of nights remaining, rather than the more rapid decline in Feynman’s original solution.
It is unclear whether the research team first encountered Feynman’s conundrum more than a decade ago, as noted by a single source.
Key figures
Richard Feynman – Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Ralph Leighton – friend of Feynman mentioned in the lunch anecdote
Tom Griffiths – co-author, Princeton University (named in one source)
Brian Christian – co-author, University of Oxford/University of California, Berkeley (named in both sources)
Sources: The Guardian, sciencenews.org
