I went to a talk on Monday at the Royal Institution entitled 'Are you smarter than a chimpanzee?' During this talk the lecturer referred to the Monty Hall problem and cited a study where university students played the game show and had to choose whether to stick or switch their choice of door.
Counterintuitively, switching improves your chances of winning from 1/3 to 2/3 but the university students tended to stick with their choice rather than switch, and therefore they didn't win very much. Part of this is because it's counterintuitive that switching would win and also because we humans are very loss averse. We prefer better to have chosen the wrong door and stick to it than to have chosen the winning door and give it up.
I wrote a little script which runs the Monty Hall problem and indeed around 66.6% of the time, switching will make you win.
The interesting thing from the talk is that apparently pigeons have played this game and unlike the university students, they learned very quickly that if they switch they improve their chances of winning, ie the birds outperformed the students.
How cool is that?
Counterintuitively, switching improves your chances of winning from 1/3 to 2/3 but the university students tended to stick with their choice rather than switch, and therefore they didn't win very much. Part of this is because it's counterintuitive that switching would win and also because we humans are very loss averse. We prefer better to have chosen the wrong door and stick to it than to have chosen the winning door and give it up.
I wrote a little script which runs the Monty Hall problem and indeed around 66.6% of the time, switching will make you win.
The interesting thing from the talk is that apparently pigeons have played this game and unlike the university students, they learned very quickly that if they switch they improve their chances of winning, ie the birds outperformed the students.
How cool is that?
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