Here's the exact text of the original question, posed to Marilyn in her column in parade magazine:
Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say number 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say number 3, which has a goat. He says to you, "Do you want to pick door number 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/vangogh/111/9.htm
The stipulation that the host knows what's behind the doors, and always opens a door with a goat is a given for this problem.
In fact, the additional information that it was 'Monty Hall' came later... which messed the whole thing up because they interviewed him, and he stated that he sometimes opened the prize door right away... and then everyone forgot the stipulations of the original question
I actually remember when this happened, because my college statistics professor was *consumed* with proving Marilyn wrong, and ended up conceding she was correct only after writing a program to do 10,000 permutations that bore her true
Trek
In reply to Re^4: Marilyn Vos Savant's Monty Hall problem
by TrekNoid
in thread Marilyn Vos Savant's Monty Hall problem
by mutated
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