Nobel Physics Prize Winner's Formula Helps Choose a Restaurant in a Strange City

Scientists have reconstructed and solved a mathematical puzzle that legendary American physicist Richard Feynman sketched roughly half a century ago in a restaurant while chatting with a friend. The formula helps find the best restaurant in an unfamiliar city.

American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman left the scientific world with far more than quantum electrodynamics – he also left behind a clever mathematical riddle that he sketched approximately 50 years ago on paper in a restaurant while conversing with a friend. Now scientists have reconstructed and solved this puzzle.

The question is simple: if you arrive in an unfamiliar city and want to find the best restaurant, what strategy should you use? Feynman's approach was based on mathematical optimization – how many restaurants should you try before making a decision to maximize the probability of finding a truly good place.

Scientists who revisited the puzzle found that Feynman's formula follows the logic of the so-called secretary problem – a classic optimization problem which states that you should first examine a certain portion of your options and then select the first candidate who surpasses all previously seen alternatives. For restaurants, this means exploring approximately 37% of available choices before making your final decision.

Feynman was renowned for his ability to explain complex scientific ideas through everyday examples. The restaurant formula is a typical example of this approach – serious mathematics wrapped in the garb of an ordinary situation, making the abstract concrete and understandable.