The Monty Hall Problem
Friday, April 11th, 2008For some reason, the “Monty Hall problem” has been coming up pretty frequently lately. The basic idea is as follows:
You are on Let’s Make a Deal with Monty Hall. You have three doors to choose from. One of the doors has a NEW CAR behind it. The other two doors have goats.
- You choose one of the three doors.
- Then, Monty Hall opens another of the three doors, revealing… A GOAT!
- Then you have the opportunity to either change your choice to the remaining closed door, or to stick with your original choice.
Is it in your best interest to stick with your original choice, or change your choice after finding out about the location of one of the goats?
Unless you are well-versed with basic probability theory, the correct answer is actually pretty counterintuitive. I won’t go into that; Wikipedia has a great article about it.
But I do have one complaint - who decided that you lose if you get a goat? I think it would be pretty awesome to have a pet goat. You could name him “Chewy” and keep him in the back yard. Now how could anybody call that “losing”?
