If you're in your early 20s and Valentine's Day has you thinking about your romantic future, consider the 37% Rule.

根据37%法则，如果你已经二十出头，情人节就是你考虑的浪漫未来。

According to journalist Brian Christian¹ and cognitive² scientist Tom Griffiths, coauthors of "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions," that rule could help you save time looking for a spouse³.

记者布莱恩•克里斯安和认知科学家汤姆•格里弗兹合作发表了文章《生活的算法：人类决定的计算科学》，这个法则可以帮你节省寻找伴侣的时间。

The 37% Rule basically says that when you need to screen a range of options in a limited amount of time — be they candidates for a job, new apartments, or potential romantic partners — the best time to make a decision is when you've looked at 37% of those options.

37%法则基本上是说，当你需要在规定时间内做出选择——可能是某个工作的候选人，新公寓或者有可能发展的对象——做决定的最好时机就是当你看了37%的选项的时候。

At that point in a selection process, you'll have gathered enough information to make an informed decision, but you won't have wasted too much time looking at more options than necessary. At the 37% mark, you're in a good place to pick the best of the bunch.

做选择的过程到了这个时间点，你已经获取了足够信息来做一个明智的决定，同时，你并没有浪费太多时间。37%，是你做选择的最佳时机。

A common thought experiment to demonstrate this theory — developed by non-PC math guys in the 1960s — is called "The Secretary Problem."

有一个共识实验可以证明这个理论——那就是20世纪60年代的“秘书难题”

In the hypothetical scenario⁴, you can only screen secretaries once. If you reject a candidate, you can't go back and hire them later (since they might have accepted another job). The question is: How deep into the pool of applicants⁵ do you go to maximise your chance of finding the best one?

假设，你一次只能见一个秘书。如果你拒绝了一个候选人，之后就不能再雇佣他（因为他们已经接受了别的工作）。问题来了：在众多候选人中，你怎么才能有最大的几率机会找到最佳人选？

If you interview just three applicants, the authors explain, your best bet is making a decision based on the strength of the second candidate. If she's better than the first, you hire her. If she's not, you wait. If you have five applicants, you wait until the third to start judging.

作者解释，如果你只面试三个候选者，你最好在面试第二个人的时候做决定。如果她比第一个人好，你就录取她，如果她不合适，你可以再等等。如果你有五个候选人，你就等到第三个人的时候再做决定。

So if you're looking for love between the ages of 18 and 40, the optimal⁶ age to start seriously considering your future husband or wife is just past your 26th birthday (37% into the 22-year span). Before then, you'll probably miss out on higher-quality partners that could still come around, but after that, good options could start to become unavailable, decreasing your chances of finding a good match.

所以，如果你在18岁到40岁之间的年龄寻找爱情，那么开始认真考虑你未来丈夫或妻子的最佳时机就是过了26岁生日的时候。（这22年跨度的37%）在这之前，你可能会错过一些高质量的对象，但他们还在你周围。而在这之后，好的选择就很难得了，找到一个好的另一半的机会也在减少。

In mathematics lingo⁷, searching for a potential mate is known as an "optimal stopping problem." Over 1,000 possibilities, Christian and Griffiths explain, you should pull the trigger on someone 36.81% of the way through. The bigger the pool of options, the closer to exactly 37% you can get.

用数学语言，寻找潜在的另一半被称为“最优停止问题”。 克里斯安和格里弗兹解释说，超过一千种可能，你应该在整个过程的36.81%的阶段做出决定。选择池越大，这个节点越接近37%。

Research about successful marriages seems to support the age sweet spot of 26.

关于成功婚姻的调查似乎也说明结婚的最佳年龄是26岁。

The 37% Rule isn't perfect. Since it borrows from the cold logic⁸ of math, it assumes that people have a reasonable understanding of what they want in a partner by 26, but doesn't account for the fact that what we look for in our partners may change dramatically between 18 and 40.

37%法则并不完善。它借用冷冰冰的数学逻辑，并且假设人们在26岁的时候充分明白了自己对另一半的要求，但它没能预知到，我们在18岁到40岁之间，找对象这件事可能发生戏剧性的变化。

What the 37% Rule does tell us is that 26 is the age when our dating decisions are most trustworthy — it's the point at which we can stop looking and start taking those big leaps of faith.

37%法则告诉我们，26岁的时候，谈恋爱做的决定是最靠谱的——在这个时候我们可以停止寻找，开始人生的重大跨越。