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Monty Hall, Co-Creator and Host of 'Let's Make a Deal,' Dies at 96
Monty Hall, the genial host and co-creator of "Let's Make a Deal," the game show on which contestants in outlandish costumes shriek and leap at the chance to see if they will win the big prize or the booby prize behind door No. 3, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Saturday. He was 96.
[...] "Let's Make a Deal" became such a pop-culture phenomenon that it gave birth to a well-known brain-twister in probability, called "the Monty Hall Problem." This thought experiment involves three doors, two goats and a coveted prize and leads to a counterintuitive solution.
[...] Mr. Hall had his proud moments as well. In 1973 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1988, Mr. Hall, who was born in Canada, was named to the Order of Canada by that country's government in recognition of the millions he had raised for a host of charities. In 2013 he was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys.
The Monty Hall problem:
Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
Vos Savant's response was that the contestant should switch to the other door. Under the standard assumptions, contestants who switch have a 2/3 chance of winning the car, while contestants who stick to their initial choice have only a 1/3 chance. [...] Many readers of vos Savant's column refused to believe switching is beneficial despite her explanation. After the problem appeared in Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including nearly 1,000 with PhDs, wrote to the magazine, most of them claiming vos Savant was wrong. Even when given explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still do not accept that switching is the best strategy (vos Savant 1991a). Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, remained unconvinced until he was shown a computer simulation demonstrating the predicted result.
Related: Get Those Brain Cells Working: The Monty Hall Problem
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @01:52PM (4 children)
I think we desperately need a new terminology to use that more explicitly/emphatically includes what you are conditioning on. Picking one out of three doors is totally different from picking one, then the host telling you one of three is the wrong answer, then picking another one. Also, it is no surprise so many PhDs can't figure this out if you see the statistics usage in academic journals. It is pitiful, and has been for many years.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday October 02 2017, @02:14PM
Yep I thought the second pick had a 1/2 prob but I can see why it is 2/3 in retrospect. Still better than 1/3 of the first pick.
So, it is obvious which is the best choice, namely blackmailing the meatbag who knows where the prize is.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 02 2017, @02:19PM (2 children)
Depends on area of study. Its kinda sorta vaguely cross eyed cousin of how not to do a zero knowledge proof / protocol. So a crypto guy interested in algos that prevent double spending of digital currency tokens would immediately detect a certain known flavor to the door puzzle, but joe6pack the rando liberal arts professor is just going to WTF at the whole thing.
There's also a "tit for tat" algorithm, which is infinitely less sexy than the name might imply, where one of the multiple exchanges involving an oracle giving one side a crapton of free true information, distorts the balance of that algo pretty intensely, so even before you run the analysis numerically it should smell badly of not being even equal odds.
Oh you guess, roughly 1% of "crypto people" are fooled by the door algo. Now I'll prove for sure the percentage isn't over 2%, although the details are too complicated to fit in the margin of this SN post. Given that new data, do you think you'll have better odds switching to and opening the door for 0% of crypto people being fooled? I mean it couldda been any integer from 0 to 100 percent, originally, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @03:21PM (1 child)
Huh? You can't just say you are going to prove something, not do it, then go on acting as if it was proved...
"Now I'll prove for sure [... proof omitted ...]. Given my proof"
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Monday October 02 2017, @03:57PM
Whoosh [wolfram.com]
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin