Should you switch doors?

you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors:

behind one door is a million dollars and the others are empty. You pick Door 1 and the host opens Door 3 to reveal an empty room. You're given the option to switch doors.

Assuming the host knows which door has money, should you switch doors?

15 Comments
 

yes. when you make your original decision, you have 1/3 probability of choosing correctly (payoff = 1000000/3). after he eliminates a door not chosen, the probability of staying with your original choice doesn;t change, while the joint probability of the other two doors is 2/3. with one of those choices eliminated, there is only one other choice to make and your payoff function becomes 2000000/3. haven't you ever seen 21

 
IlliniProgrammerIt there is a 2/3 chance you pick the wrong door.
not necessarily true.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 
happypantsmcgee
IlliniProgrammerIt there is a 2/3 chance you pick the wrong door.
not necessarily true.
Out of three doors without any other information? The odds of picking the right door are one in three.

Let's try a thought experiment with 1 million doors. Monty reveals that there's goats behind 999,998. Now all that's left is your door and this other one that's randomly left unopened. Do you switch now? Bear in mind, 99.9999% chance you picked the wrong door.

 

When you first picked the door: 1/3rd chance of winning

If you switch: your chance of winning is 2/3 --if you pick the right door (1 out of 3 times), and one empty door is revealed, switching means you lose 100% of the time --If you pick the wrong door (2 out of 3 times), and one empty door is revealed, then switching means you win 100% of the time

1/3x0 + 2/3x1=2/3

slightly counterintuitive at first

 

Dude, I think he just misread my post. I have a tendancy to finish thoughts midsentence and not give a lot of context.

Regardless, I've gotten into a debate with two quants- one with a Math PhD- and a number of other really smart folks on this. The 2/3 number is pretty controversial. Perhaps when- err, if- you get a job in industry, you'll actually be able to tell what actually makes someone a retard or not.

 
Best Response
IlliniProgrammerDude, I think he just misread my post. I have a tendancy to finish thoughts midsentence and not give a lot of context.

Regardless, I've gotten into a debate with two quants- one with a Math PhD- and a number of other really smart folks on this. The 2/3 number is pretty controversial. Perhaps when- err, if- you get a job in industry, you'll actually be able to tell what actually makes someone a retard or not.

The 2/3 probability is not controversial at all if the car's location is random. The odds that you pick the right door if you switch is 2/3.

If the car's location is arbitrary then you can't really say that it's 2/3. But I think the problem is usually stated as the car being behind a random door (i.e. uniform). In which case, since the car's location is random, you have a 1/3 chance of picking it originally. If you don't pick the car (2/3), then the host must reveal the only other goat door with certainty, so you have 2/3 odds of getting the car when you switch.

EDIT: The wiki article confirms:" Although not explicitly stated in this version, solutions are often based on the additional assumptions that the car is initially equally likely to be behind each door". With this assumption, the solution is clearly correct.

 

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