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

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the contestants I saw didn't even seem to be able to do simple arithmetic in their head.

[/ QUOTE ] I've seen things as cut and dry as a $200,000 case and two nothing cases with a $70,000 deal getting turned down.

People should really think about the concepts of expected value and risk aversion for five minutes before getting on the show. But that doesn't make good TV.

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

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I've seen things as cut and dry as a $200,000 case and two nothing cases with a $70,000 deal getting turned down.

People should really think about the concepts of expected value and risk aversion for five minutes before getting on the show. But that doesn't make good TV.

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People are morons, even university graduates who take math-based courses don't understand elementary EV and risk adversion concepts, and seeing Deal-or-no-deal contestants play horrendously tilts me hard.

In fact, the entire game is structured in such a way, that a "deal" is usually higher than the actual amount in the box. This makes most contestants look like geniuses.

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

I don't know how the deal offers are structured, and haven't seen any good sources on it. (And don't have sufficient masochism or patience to watch the show to do appropriate research.)

However, it seems like the offers could be structured in such a way that the marginal EV of removing more cases is a good move, even when the current offer is larger than the arithmetic mean of the cases, so it's not necessarily sufficient to only look at the current offer compared to the case values.

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

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In fact, the entire game is structured in such a way, that a "deal" is usually higher than the actual amount in the box.

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

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

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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.

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

okay, thank you for the clarification

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

I'm sure this has been discussed here before, but the dynamic that makes the game more interesting is not pure EV, but how the value of money changes relative to how much you have. For example, you could say that taking $150K is equal in EV to a choice that will yield either $0 or $300K half the time each, but most people would take the $150K, because the second $150K has less value to you than the first one. That said, would you take $100K or take option B when it will be either $0 or $300K? Somewhere in there is a line for you where you take the risk. It's not really just an EV thing unless you already have a lot of money. I think this is why the game is interesting.

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

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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).

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

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In fact, the entire game is structured in such a way, that a "deal" is usually higher than the actual amount in the box.

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

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The average value per case is $131,477. Only 6 of the 26 cases are larger than that.

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

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In fact, the entire game is structured in such a way, that a "deal" is usually higher than the actual amount in the box.

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

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The average value per case is $131,477. Only 6 of the 26 cases are larger than that.

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Agreed, but that also indicates that very few deals should be accepted, barring a heavily weighted scenario such as bluebear's