Kasane
03-23-2007, 07:01 PM
A thoroughly honest game-show host has placed a car behind one of three doors. There is a goat behind each of the other doors. You have no prior knowledge that allows you to distinguish among the doors. "First you point toward a door," he says. "Then I'll open one of the other doors to reveal a goat. After I've shown you the goat, you make your final choice whether to stick with your initial choice of doors, or to switch to the remaining door. You win whatever is behind the door."
You begin by pointing to door number 1. The host shows you that door number 3 has a goat. Do the player's chances of getting the car increase by switching to Door 2?
My brother posed this one to me today, and intuitively I knew the answer was "yes" -- and I attributed that knowledge to poker. I knew the host was giving me information, and it took almost no time for me to figure out what info and how it was important. It took me fifteen minutes to convince him -- and he's a fairly smart guy.
Now I'm wondering if I can more formally apply this back to poker -- but it may be trivial in that we do this all the time. Anyhoo, it's a fun puzzle.
More at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
You begin by pointing to door number 1. The host shows you that door number 3 has a goat. Do the player's chances of getting the car increase by switching to Door 2?
My brother posed this one to me today, and intuitively I knew the answer was "yes" -- and I attributed that knowledge to poker. I knew the host was giving me information, and it took almost no time for me to figure out what info and how it was important. It took me fifteen minutes to convince him -- and he's a fairly smart guy.
Now I'm wondering if I can more formally apply this back to poker -- but it may be trivial in that we do this all the time. Anyhoo, it's a fun puzzle.
More at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem