The math of choosing a restaurant meal is revealed in Richard Feynman’s notes

Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, solved a real-world math puzzle in the 1970s — when dining out, should you return to a favourite or try somewhere new? His scribbled notes, undeciphered until recently, revealed an optimal strategy: compare your best option against a shifting threshold that starts high but drops as fewer nights remain. A survey of 2,500 people found that while nobody used Feynman's exact formula, people naturally adopted simpler shortcuts that got surprisingly close to the ideal outcome.