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"If all you know is that he opened a goat door you have learned nothing."

This is precisely where you are wrong.

Ok let’s play!

We play this game 1000 times.

33% of the time you pick the car and I show you a goat. You switch and lose 100% of the time.

66% of the time you pick a goat and I don’t show you a goat. Assuming you don’t switch because you believe this means you have an equal odd on your current door, you lose 100% of the time.

Congrats. You have lost every single round.

You've restated the problem (incorrectly) -- changed it.

There's still a goat you could show me. And it is a fact that you show me a goat. Nowhere in the problem does it suggest there is a chance you show me a goat.

I do honestly admire your dogged commitment, and I think the way you are committed shows up an important point about the article and the history of the problem.

Which is that one can quite clearly fairly argue the point, as you are doing, without resorting to misogynistic or patronising rudeness as so many did at the time!

But you're still wrong. :-)

And I'm going to leave it here.

[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20230706235720/https://probabili...

rspeele 843 days ago

I am curious how you feel about the "Monty Fall"/"Monty Crawl" problems linked elsewhere in the thread.[0]

For my part I am somewhat sympathetic to jncfhnb's point. The exact phrasing that Vos Savant was asked did not specify the rules that the host was required to open a door, nor that it always must be a goat door. It simply says that the host has knowledge of what's behind the doors, and in this particular iteration of the game, he showed you a goat and asked you about switching.

That does not exclude a scenario where the host is a manipulative fellow, who chose to show you the goat only because he knows you are about to win, trying to convince you to lose. A contestant on the real show would surely worry about this possibility.

Of course, the people who wrote to disagree with Vos Savant almost never said "the problem is not fully stated", they said "it's 50/50 you fool", which isn't right. Additionally, since it wouldn't be a math problem at all if we let the host have agency, it is reasonable to assume the unspoken rule that he does not, leading to Marilyn's correct 2/3rds answer.

It doesn't make a difference what causes Monty to reveal a goat.

A goat behind a door the contestant did not choose is eliminated. That is all that matters. It could have been done by a Heath-Robinson machine, or a passing lonely shrubber, or elves.

Monty isn't a floating variable in the puzzle who makes choices. His choice is fixed. Which I imagine is why vos Savant adds the actually extraneous information that Monty is fully aware what is going on behind the scenes -- to underscore the concept that Monty isn't a variable.

The fact that a goat behind an unchosen door was revealed is what is crucial to the setup of the entire puzzle.

And that -- despite jncfhnb's protestations -- is information that makes the puzzle determinate.

rspeele 843 days ago

> It doesn't make a difference what causes Monty to reveal a goat.

Oh, but it does! See the "Monty Fall" version of the problem, in which Monty accidentally trips and opens a door, which just happens to reveal a goat. In this variant there is no advantage gained by switching, because no more information was revealed about the remaining unopened door.

The information gain only happens in the original game because we know that Monty was forced to avoid the winning door in the (66% likely) case where we didn't already pick it.

Noooo

It is not the fact that a goat is behind the door. It is the fact that a goat door would always have been opened! These two facts are not the same!

I have not restated the problem.

You’ve incorrectly assumed that I would be showing you a goat in every case. But that is not included in the prompt. All you know is that you were shown a goat on one play. This is possible in the setup I’ve listed. You landed in that 33% case where you chose a car.

There is nothing in the prompt that says we are not playing my variant of the game.

Being told that you SAW a goat does not mean you would ALWAYS SEE a goat if the previous conditions had gone differently. And that is why you’re wrong :)

Again > all you know is that he opened a goat door

> You’ve incorrectly assumed that I would be showing you a goat in every case. But that is not included in the prompt.

Yes. It is. It is a fixed part of the scenario. Monty opens a door and shows you a goat. He knows it is going to be a goat (he is "well-aware of what is going on behind the scenes"). He's showing you a goat as part of the problem which is: should you switch?

Again: think through what the problem actually SAYS:

> Imagine that you’re on a television game show and the host presents you with three closed doors. Behind one of them, sits a sparkling, brand-new Lincoln Continental; behind the other two, are smelly old goats. The host implores you to pick a door, and you select door #1. Then, the host, who is well-aware of what’s going on behind the scenes, opens door #3, revealing one of the goats.

> “Now,” he says, turning toward you, “do you want to keep door #1, or do you want to switch to door #2?”

No matter what: the goat Monty shows you is not a matter of chance. It is a fixed part of the problem. It's there in writing: he shows you a goat. Full stop.

No! Read the prompt very carefully.

You know nothing except you picked door 1 and then he decided to show door 3.

You do not know if he would have shown door 3 had you picked door 2! This is NOT in the prompt. You cannot assume that.

The experience of this contestant is fully and equally possible within my version of the game too!