Everything is straight forward when you look at it through the right abstractions. That's the point of abstraction. Simulation can be useful when you don't kno

Everything is straight forward when you look at it through the right abstractions. That's the point of abstraction. Simulation can be useful when you don't know what the right abstraction is, which is the problem most people have with Monty Hall -- this is the point I got from TFA. I disagree with the TFA that you need "a PhD in queueing theory" to know what the right abstractions are, but it's still beyond most people because we are still woefully statistically illiterate as a species. I could probably also solve that shard replica problem analytically -- or at least recursively (it sounds like a variant of coupon collection) -- but I'd still want to confirm my calculations by writing a simulation.