Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Interesting mind experiment

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Jonathan King wrote:

> > People who can't figure it out, especially after serious
> > consideration, really aren't that smart.
>
> I think that's a bit harsh, since there are a lot of interesting tricks
> out there that some really smart people have cratered on.  In
> particular, the "Monty Hall Problem".  Erdos himself got bamboozled by
> that one.


I think you're right.  The really key part is trust/skepticism.  It's a
personality trait, not a matter of intelligence.  As you put it...

> The third weakness, and the star of our show, is the fact that people
> trust background stories and moreover do not systematically attempt to
> disconfirm their own hypotheses or the statements of others.

I'm more skeptical than most people, especially when it comes to claims
for paranormal phenomena.

Erdos really did not get the Monty Hall problem?  That surprises me.
It's fairly simple conditional probability.  The problem has to be stated
very precisely.  Maybe the moral of that story is that anyone can make
mistakes.

Ahh...  I have Hoffman's bio of Erdos, "The Man Who Loves Only Numbers,"
but only read part of it.  Now I see the chapter "Getting The Goat" about
the Monte Hall problem.  It's hard to know what happened because we have
to rely on one man's account.  We don't know if he stated the problem
correctly in the first place, but it seems likely that he did.  Erdos was
a bit of a nut and may have been depressed at the time (perhaps with
difficulty concentrating).

The Monte Hall problem is very easy if you think about it the right way.
If you don't think about it the right way, you will get very confused.
Apparently, many, many people who should have known better (mathematicians
and statisticians) sent their wrong answers and angry words to Marilyn Vos
Savant when she ran her answer to the Monte Hall problem in Parade
magazine.  I think it is because she is a woman and not a professor or
scientist/mathematician/probabilist that she her (obviously correct)
answer was so widely questioned.

If anyone wants to hear my simple explanation of the puzzle, let me know
and I'll send it to the list in a day or so.

Mike
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