Just another dimension?

Monday, June 20, 2005
Marilyn and the Monty Hall Problem -vww

The Monty Hall Problem
You're on a gameshow, where there are three doors. Behind 2 of the doors are goats. Only one door leads to the prize. You pick a door, and then, BEFORE YOUR DOOR IS OPENED, the gameshow host opens one of the OTHER doors, revealing a goat. Then he gives you the choice of sticking with your original guess, or switching to the other unopened door. The question is, which gives you greater odds of winning?

Named for its similarity to the Let's Make a Deal game show hosted by Monty Hall, the problem became famous when Marilyn vos Savant (also famous for her insanely high IQ) published the solution that the odds of winning is higher when you switch to the other unopened door. Tens of thousands of people who disagreed sent letters demanding that she admit she was wrong. Many of them were professors from well-established universities too.

I am writing about this because I recently came across books and people making references to this problem. Although it seems pretty obvious to me that Marilyn vos Savant was correct, I am quite puzzled as to why so many people do not think so. A book I bought recently stated that it was due to an ambiguity in the phrasing of the question. This resulted in two possible interpretations, which yielded two different answers. Clearly, I have interpreted the question the same way as vos Savant. Actually, I find that the other interpretation is quite an abnormal way of interpreting the question.

Anyway, here are some other interesting links I googled up on Marilyn vos Savant.
1. Wikipedia entry
2. Marilyn is Wrong!
3. Official site (Quite an empty site but I like the red jacket)

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Yiheng made 9:30 AM

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