The Monty Hall Problem

[denny]

Some friends bent my brain yesterday with a thing called 'the Monty Hall problem' - I thought I'd share the sheer confusion with others...

Description of problem, and ensuing discussion (including lots of explanations which may either help or hurt your head, or possibly both):
http://www.livejournal.com/users/duranorak/790534.html?thread=4120070#t4120070

An off-site explanation, also linked in the above discussion but posted separately here out of sheer helpfulness (I still didn't get it after reading this personally):
http://www.io.com/~kmellis/monty.html

Comments

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I've never heard JANet referred to as a 'very small network' before. Except by Americans. :)

Yes, you've stated the problem correctly. What perplexed me for ages is why the odds of the other one he didn't open being the prize are higher than the odds of the one you chose being the prize, as they both had equal odds of being the prize to begin with.

Your statement in brackets only applies to the second instance, where the wrong door was originally chosen - in that case the other unopened door is the prize. In the first instance, where the correct door was originally chosen, then obviously the other unopened door doesn't contain the prize. I'm not sure if that's what you meant or not - the way you separated the bracketed statement out from the two cases makes it look like it applies to both?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

In the brackets I meant that was what happened if you picked the wrong door the first time. (I never pick the right door the first time!)

I menat you are on a very small network (of one) and I'm sharing the out-cable from college with 400 women looking at Quizilla. Therefore you should cut & paste the problem instead of giving me links to follow! (Although it was at 1:00am and they were all out getting drunk...)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wish I'd cut and paste it in retrospect, if only to separate the intuitive solution confusion from the helpful explanations :)

That said, most of the helpful explanations only seemed to confuse the matter more for me. It's quite amusing trying to explain it to someone else once you've figured it out, and watching them look blankly at you and realising you can't explain it comprehensibly either :)