Researchers decipher Feynman's restaurant problem, prove optimal solution, and reveal human decision-making strategies

Summary

Researchers have deciphered and solved a decision-making problem originally posed by physicist Richard Feynman in handwritten notes from the 1970s. The problem involves optimizing dish selection over multiple meals at a restaurant. The study proves Feynman's solution was optimal, generalizes it to other distributions, and tests human decision-making strategies in a large-scale experiment with 2,520 participants, finding that humans use a linearly decreasing decision threshold.