A brain teasing probability puzzle

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Eomer

Eomer

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a_skeleton_03_sl said:
Not obvious = highly debatable.
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No, sorry, those two do not equate. Plenty of shit that isn't obvious is also not overly debatable. It's not obvious that nitrogen is the reason the sky is blue, but it's not debatable either. We know that shit. It might take a little bit of effort to explain it, or a lot of effort if someone is totally lacking in understanding of science/chemistry. But it's not up for debate.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:
The fact that Araysar couldn't grasp a highly complicated concept is no reason to RRP the man or compare him to Merlin.
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It's not highly complicated. The Monty Hall problem is taught to highschool students learning basic probability, because while it's non-obvious, the explanation for it is actually fairly simple and 99% of people will go "oooooh" after about 30 seconds of having it explained to them by a halfway competent teacher. It's a wonderful example of how and why probabilities can be a bitch, even in simple situations, because human intuition gets tripped the fuck up by it.

So again, it's not highly complicated. It's just not self-evident or obvious upon first glance. That doesn't make it highly debatable, either.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:
IF SO you need to RRP every single person that was involved since it was so obvious and not even open for debate.
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No, there was one single poster who continually shat up the thread to the exclusion of all others. Araysar had 72 fucking posts in the thread, and when he was RRP'd there was 248 posts. His shit posting comprised slightly less than one third of the thread. No one else came close.
 
T

The Master

Bronze Squire
2,084
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a_skeleton_03_sl said:
Not obvious = highly debatable.
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Again, not sure you understand what "debatable" means. Not obvious might mean it requires explanation. Said explanation was given, exhaustively. It wasn't obvious that the reason corn kernels are different colors is because of jumping genes. That required forty years of research and, outside of a BS in biology, still isn't especially obvious. But it has a right answer. Some things are hard to understand. That makes them not obvious. But those things are still understood in a larger sense by the people who have put in the effort to understand them. It is obvious to anyone who puts the work in to understanding the material.

The issue with this problem, and others like it, is that they are very simple to put in front of people who have no tools to think about the solution. More often than not that makes them wrong. If the problem itself was as complex as the answer this wouldn't be an issue, because someone who didn't understand the problem would stop at that point and not even try to guess at the solution (and get emotional when they were wrong).
 
chaos

chaos

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Tuco_sl said:
Pretty much. I rrp'd Araysar for his own good. Look at the upstanding citizen Merlin has become. One day Araysar can hope to reach the level of enlightenment that Merlin has.
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I doubt that. Merlin is metal as fuck, Araysar has a mullet and is from Chechnya.
 
hodj

hodj

Vox Populi Jihadi
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The more people who vote on this poll, the closer the yes votes come to 66%.

The tide goes in, the tide goes out.

You can't explain that.
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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a_skeleton_03_sl said:
To put it into perspective the problem has been submitted to the Wikipedia supreme court:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...y_Hall_problem
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here's the result of the wiki court:

Gilkanter_sl said:
It's kinda funny that this was brought forward on February 9th, 2011. Here's what I posted on the MHP talk page, on February 7, 2009 under the heading of "Conventional Wisdom". I have subsequently learned about 'reliable sources', so I have revised my estimate upwards from 5% to 10% regarding, "Yes, I look at this entire article, excepting maybe 5% of it, as an elaborate hoax."
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Remedies_sl said:
Glkanter banned[edit source]
1.2) Glkanter is banned from Wikipedia for one year, and is further subject to an indefinite topic ban on subjects related to the Monty Hall Problem.
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Erronius

Erronius

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It isn't even disputable that if you keep your first choice, you only have a 1/3 chance of it being the car and a 2/3rds chance of it being a goat. But if you make the most common assumption that the Host will (must) open another door to display a goat, that leaves a 2 in 3 chance that the car is behind the 3rd door (complimenting the 1 in 3 chance it was behind door #1). Of course the most important part of this is what happens when your initial door has a goat (2/3rds chance): if the Host must openanotherdoor with a goat then the 3rd door MUST be a car (as doors # 1 and #2 had goats), but that is predicated on your 2/3 odds of getting a goat in the first place. The only time you can possibly lose by switching is when your first pick was the car (1 in 3 chance), as when it is a goat (2 in 3) the Host removes the possibility of the 2nd goat leaving only the car 2/3rds of the time.

Another way of thinking about it is asking yourself what the odds are of you picking the door with the car in the first place. Obviously it is 1 in 3. Ifthe Host always opens a wrong door to reveal a goat, it doesn't change the odds of your initial pick (you still have a 1 in 3 chance of it being a car). It's still 1 in 3. But if the odds of the car being behind theother two doorswas 2 in 3, then when the Host opens one of those doors to reveal a goat, then you now know that 2/3rds of the time that the car is behind the remaining door, and a third of the time the car was behind the first door all along.
 
Tuco

Tuco

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Eomer_sl said:
No, sorry, those two do not equate. Plenty of shit that isn't obvious is also not overly debatable.
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I had a day long argument with my friend about this. I don't remember my stance but his was that it was the sky reflecting off the ocean (We lived in fucking michigan). I miss being 11 =\
 
A

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
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Tuco_sl said:
no surprises here!
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Did you go back and read why? I don't think you did. It is on page 1.

Since I know you won't go back let me show it to you.

a_skeleton_03_sl said:
I picked don't switch because I am not a bitch.
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I would never switch my pick in a situation like that because if I win I am a total badass that "knew" all along. If I am wrong, everyone would be like "hey what could you do, it was 50/50" and I would just smile and nod.
 
Araysar

Loser Araysar

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