{"id":1599,"date":"2011-03-22T16:38:27","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T20:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2011-03-22T16:38:27","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T20:38:27","slug":"do-the-math-or-get-the-goat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=1599","title":{"rendered":"Do the math or get the goat!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I originally got this story from the wonderful WWW trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer<\/a>, second book, which is WWW:Watch. \u00a0The idea is that you are on “Let’s Make A Deal” and you can pick from one of three doors. \u00a0Behind one door is a brand new car. \u00a0Behind each of the other two doors is a goat. \u00a0You make your choice (door No. 1, 2 or 3) and Monty Hall<\/a> opens one of the other two doors to reveal – a goat. \u00a0Then he says you can change your mind or you can stay with your original choice. \u00a0What do you do?<\/p>\n

Cancerninja<\/a> posted this on her tumblr and I see that the scenario was discussed in another book, one I have not read, called The Curious Case of the Dog In The Night, by Mark Haddon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The point is that every fiber of my being says it doesn’t matter if you change your mind about the remaining two doors. \u00a0But Marilyn vos Savant<\/a> proved that your chances of getting the car go WAY up if you simply change your mind when confronted with the 50\/50 proposition.<\/p>\n

In WWW:Watch, Sawyer reasoned that the natural selection had not favored the trait of accurately evaluating probability because of the following scenario: \u00a0If proto man see a rustling in the bush and there is a 1 in 10 chance the rustling is a hungry tiger, and proto-man plays the odds, 1 in 10 times he will get eaten. \u00a0But if proto-man always thinks its a tiger, he will be wrong 9 out of ten times, but he will still be alive.<\/p>\n

Anyway, here is vos Saavant’s proof, as reprinted in the Cancerninja post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> I have no idea what any of that means, but it looks awfully cool. \u00a0Would you have thought that changing your mind would have improved your odds of getting the car?<\/p>\n

And remember, all of this starts with the basic assumption that you don’t want a goat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I originally got this story from the wonderful WWW trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer, second book, which is WWW:Watch. \u00a0The idea is that you are on “Let’s Make A Deal” and you can pick from one of three doors. \u00a0Behind … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50],"tags":[1252,1254,1251,1253,265],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}