DEAL or NO DEAL (TV Game Show) How Decide? - Page 2

rufus · #1 11-11-2007, 10:49 PM

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What is the correct way to decide whether to accept the bankers offer?
...
Is this correct?

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It's unclear what the banker's behavior is, or whithat the actual value of the money is. Without those two pieces of information, it's not too easy to determine the correct strategy.

Generally speaking, it's going to be a poor choice to take the deal when it's lower than the geometric mean of the values, and a good choice to take the deal when it's higher than the arithmetic mean, but you don't see contestants with calulators.

TomBrooks · #2 11-12-2007, 01:20 AM

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You don't see contestants with calulators.

[/ QUOTE ] I've only seen a few episodes, so my sample is very small, but the contestants I saw didn't even seem to be able to do simple arithmetic in their head.

T50_Omaha8 · #3 11-12-2007, 01:48 AM

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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.

BlueBear · #4 11-12-2007, 10:37 AM

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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.

rufus · #5 11-12-2007, 12:19 PM

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.

Lottery Larry · #6 11-12-2007, 03:47 PM

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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?

HeroInBlack · #7 11-12-2007, 06:04 PM

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.

rufus · #8 11-13-2007, 10:04 AM

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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.

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It's called risk aversion, and comes up in bankrolling discussions.

snappo · #9 11-13-2007, 01:58 PM

slightly unrelated, but from the Deal or No Deal wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_or...tific_research

"A team of economists have analyzed the decisions of people appearing in European and US episodes of Deal or No Deal and found, among other things, that contestants are less risk averse or even risk seeking when they have seen their expected winnings tumble."

lol i love how it took a "team of economists" to figure out what every poker player already knows as tilt .

pococurante · #10 11-13-2007, 07:54 PM

Oddly enough, I've also seen reverse tilt on the show. Someone recently had an offer of $107k... the average case was worth about $135k, so it was a reasonable 80% of EV offer. The contestant chose to keep playing though.

In play was the 750k, 200k, and five small numbers.

She then eliminated the 200k case. The next offer was only $50,000... only 40% of the value of the average case. The loss had affected her, and she decided to take the deal.

As they played through the "what ifs", her next case was a small number, and the offer was $120k... back up to the 80% level. If she had continued, she would have had a 5/6 chance to more than double her money.