Wikipedia:Peer review/Monty Hall problem/archive1

Monty Hall problem

The conclusions drawn in the article appear to be based on a misunderstanding or misstatement of the factors involved. There's no edit war (yet) but the last two items in the talk section are verging on the acrimonious.

Mathematicians particularly encouraged.

The disputation of the conclusions drawn in the article are quite clearly based on ignoring information stated in the first paragraph of the article, namely, that a party in the problem who is removing incorrect choices the player might otherwise make knows they are incorrect choices -- he is not randomly picking choices to remove which only happen to be incorrect choices. Acrimony is because the only disputant is basing his disputation on non-facts which reading the problem statement would make very clear are non-facts and yet insists he is not trolling. -- Antaeus Feldspar 04:17, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The problem statement is ambiguous. Someone needs to adjust it so that it describes a game in which the host always opens a door that the contestant did not pick. Leaving this constraint out admits the possibility that the two are playing a game in which the host sometimes opens the same door that the contestant picked. For example, he may have chosen the door to open at random among all three doors, or at random between the two doors with goats. These seem to be the games that some reviewers have in mind, when they conclude that the two remaining doors are equally likely to conceal the car. -- Wmarkham

"... after Jane has selected a door but before she actually opens it, the host (who knows what is behind each door) opens one of the other doors ..." How is "one of the other doors" ambiguous? How does it admit the possibility of the host choosing to open the same door that the contestant picked? -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:30, 1 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It is ambiguous as to whether or not the host will always do this, when the game is played multiple times. Probabilities can only be interpreted in the context of a repeatable process. The question does not clearly describe any particular repeatable process. One way to construct one from the question, as stated, is to suppose that every time the game is played, the host will choose another door, and that that in doing so, he will reveal a goat. However, this is not the only possible game.

The fact that some people interpret the question differently than you do is the very definition of ambiguity. -- Wmarkham 23:37, 3 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]