DEAL or NO DEAL (TV Game Show) How Decide?

[BlueBear]

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I must not understand something here.. can you explain?

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Basically, people really only feel the pressure to deal when there are one (or maybe two) large amounts and a bunch of small amounts on the board. As a consequence, typically, people who take the deal, will receive more than what's in their case.

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In addition to this, players make the most horribly EV decisions when the remaining boxes are skewed in favour of the lower end boxes.

Eg. Let's say the remaining boxes are $1, $2, $3 and $100000, and the offer is $20000. The EV of playing on is roughly $25000+.

Let's say the player now takes the deal, pocketing $20000. They go through the motions and play the game through.

The final box would either be $1, $2, $3 and $100000. In three out of these four cases, the contestant is "seen" to have magically turned a tiny amount of money into $20000! They would look pretty clever to an unmathematical audience.

I could present my argument in a more formal manner, but I think the above example is illustrative of my point that the game is basically designed to make people look like geniuses (due to faulty reasoning and logic).