Wednesday, December 17

Counterintuitive Probability

How to better your chances of winning the car!

More Science Experiments videos at 5min.com


What they don't factor into the strict probability logic is your emotional distress for switching doors and then getting a goat knowing you had picked the car first. That would be much more traumatic than sticking with your original door and missing the car.

So how good are you at putting your emotions aside and doing what makes sense? :-)

2 comments:

taryn said...

It's interesting because I JUST saw this concept illustrated on the movie 21, a "true story of the very brightest young minds in the country — and how they took Vegas for millions." They did this by playing Blackjack. Anyway, one of the clips shows the lead role in his college classroom with his professor posing him this very same "game show" scenario, and he explains it correctly.

It's weird that our first instinct is to think, "To switch doesn't matter, because our chances are still 50%," yet that was so clearly discounted with this explanation. I have never been one for numbers or math, but this is truly fascinating to me. Especially since I would normally tend towards an emotional response in the heat of the moment rather than use clear cut logic.

I am SO going on a game show...

Luke said...

Yeah, I thought of "21" when I saw this clip too. They explain the concept here better than they did on 21. :-)

I would like to think I could make the rational choice, but I know my disappointment would be bitter if I switched and lost the car.

I'm reading a book called "Neuroeconomics" - Your Money and Your Brain", and it has some really fascinating stuff in it about how our brains process decisions involving money.

I find our brains the most fascinating part of our bodies.