[mosta]

I've chimed in on this topic in several previous threads, and I'm not going to try to debate or go on at length. But let me ask if I've gleaned correctly that you are saying the EV of switching is undefined?

while not a mathematician, I've been satisfied with the argument that when you define the problem as two envelops and two quantities P and Q, and then at the next step you get quantity A and start to analyze the possibilities of A, .5A and 2A--you have simply introduced a contradiction: 3 possibilities versus 2 possibilities. At that point you've gone off track into nonsense. And there is no need to introduce any talk of the distribution of the original quantities to address the error.

And when you keep it straight as 2 quantities only, the EV is zero.

at least one mathematician in a previous thread disagreed that that is the/an answer. but a friend of mine who is also a mathematician (phd from a top school) but not a probabilist agreed with me entirely. so if I'm wrong I guess I'm not inarguably wrong?