The 37% Rule for Big Life Decisions

...except that the starting conditions are that you have n candidates/options for a decision, you consider in random order, and then you have o accept or reject each one before examining the next, plus no backtracks.

How often do these conditions obtain in real life? If you're dating, it's unlikely you know what your total number of future partners will be - even if you're religious and just want to be with one person for ever, you necessarily conceive of courting more than one person (since you might be rejected by them). For hiring for a job or purchasing a house, why would you make a final decision on each candidate before looking at any others?

The math is interesting and this is surely a useful heuristic for some situations, but (like much pop-math writing) the effort to make it cool and relevant backfires because the constraints seem arbitrary and divorced from real world experience.