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Is there a particular reason that so many people were wrong... that seems like a glitch in the matrix almost. I'm hungover, and suck at math, and understand aft

Is there a particular reason that so many people were wrong... that seems like a glitch in the matrix almost. I'm hungover, and suck at math, and understand after she explained it... Even after she explained it she still received so many replies saying she was wrong, I just am wondering what's going on here that's causing this. That's just so bizarre.

MPSimmons 13y ago
Human brains didn't evolve to deal with these kinds of problems, so when we encounter them, we take mental shortcuts, like "There are three doors. There is one good prize. The odds are one in three". It's actually a really big cognitive leap to get from there to the idea that, because the gameshow host knows the answer, that the visible answer differs from the mental shortcut. I've got a good friend who speaks at a lot of risk management seminars, and a good deal of people who deal with financial risk every day get this question wrong. He's got a really good blog at http://behavioralrisk.net/ http://behavioralrisk.net/
asdfologist 13y ago
From the wikipedia article: "Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, remained unconvinced until he was shown a computer simulation confirming the predicted result."
- lutusp 13y ago
  Now I don't feel so bad for not getting it at first. :)
lutusp 13y ago
> Is there a particular reason that so many people were wrong ... Yes. The difficulty with the Monty Hall problem has to do with grasping all the probabilities represented by all the outcomes at once. I personally didn't fully understand it until I wrote a list of all the possible outcomes and summed the probabilities.
Nzen 13y ago
It just seems so easy to discount the first part of the exercise. It's hard to distinguish between contestants & the 'alien' who comes in after. I found her matrix rather messy & convinced myself with the following: | chosen | revealed | hidden | | car __ | empty __ | goat__ | | empty_ | goat ___ | car __ | | goat _ | empty __ | car __ |

MPSimmons 13y ago

Human brains didn't evolve to deal with these kinds of problems, so when we encounter them, we take mental shortcuts, like "There are three doors. There is one good prize. The odds are one in three". It's actually a really big cognitive leap to get from there to the idea that, because the gameshow host knows the answer, that the visible answer differs from the mental shortcut. I've got a good friend who speaks at a lot of risk management seminars, and a good deal of people who deal with financial risk every day get this question wrong. He's got a really good blog at http://behavioralrisk.net/ http://behavioralrisk.net/

asdfologist 13y ago

From the wikipedia article: "Paul Erdős, one of the most prolific mathematicians in history, remained unconvinced until he was shown a computer simulation confirming the predicted result."

lutusp 13y ago
Now I don't feel so bad for not getting it at first. :)

lutusp 13y ago

> Is there a particular reason that so many people were wrong ... Yes. The difficulty with the Monty Hall problem has to do with grasping all the probabilities represented by all the outcomes at once. I personally didn't fully understand it until I wrote a list of all the possible outcomes and summed the probabilities.

Nzen 13y ago