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OT: Re: Are you a "Mental Gymnast"?

Subject: OT: Re: Are you a "Mental Gymnast"?
From: Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 08:49:59 +0100


Yes. My thought is that their answer (FAQ item 2.4) is horse-pucky.

The fallacy is that their answer assumes some sort
of causative connection between the two choices.

There is a causative connection: By making your choice of which door to open, you influence the choice of which door the game master will open. (Think about it: If you pick a losing door in the first round, you actually force his decision.)

The reason why it is correct to switch doors is not intuitive, at least for the overwhelming majority of people, but switching is still correct. (If you don't believe it, you can build a decision table where you track each possible combination of choices and outcomes.)

I think the real lesson of this puzzle is that our intuition may be wrong, even when we are very much convinced of it being correct. Or, on a more practical manner: Our intuition is not suited to dependent probabilities.

Regards
Jan Henning

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Re: Are you a "Mental Gymnast"?: From: Kevin McLauchlan

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