It's called the Monty Hall Paradox and it's a pretty damn interesting teaser to puzzle your mind over. I came across it in the book The Curious Night of the Dog Incident and thought some of you dear readers (Is it one or two now? I can't ever remember, there's getting to be some many of you!) would appreciate it as well. It goes something like this; Marilyn Vos Savant, the women with the highest IQ in the world, as according to the Guinness Book of World Records, has a column in Parade Magazine in which she attempts to answer difficult questions, often of the mathematical and logical variety, sent in by her readers. In 1990 Craig F. Whitaker of Columbia, Maryland famously sent in the following question.

You are on a game show on television. On this game show the idea is to win a car as a prize. The game show host shows you three doors. He says that there is a car behind one of the doors and there are goats behind the other two doors. He asks you to pick a door. You pick a door but the door is not opened. Then the game show host opens one of the doors you didn't pick to show a goat (because he knows what is behind the doors). Then he says that you have one final chance to change your mind before the doors are opened and you get a car or a goat. So he asks you if you want to change your mind and pick the other unopened door instead. What should you do?

In her response, Marilyn Vos Savant said that you should always change your mind and pick the final door because by doing so would give you a 2/3 chance of getting a car. Now at first blush this seems wrong; intuitively you see it as a clear 50/50 type of proposition. Two doors left and you have to select one, just like flipping a coin, right? What could be more clear or simple or American than that? Well not so fast so says Marilyn with that high powered overgrown cranium of hers.

The answer she gave set off a minor firestorm of sorts among the readers of her Parade Magazine column. Approximately 92% of the letters she received in response claimed she got it wrong...dead wrong. Many of the letters that were sent in were from mathematicians and scientist from around the country. Here are some samples of what was said:

I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error.

Robert Sachs, PhD, George Mason University

There is enough mathematical illiteracy in this county, and we don't need the world's highest IQ propagating more. Shame!

Scott Smith, PhD George Mason University


I am in shock that after being corrected by at least three mathematicians, you still do not see your mistake.

Kent Ford, Dickinson State University

You are utterly incorrect. How many irate mathematicians are needed to get you to change your mind?

E. Ray Bobo, Ph.D., Georgetown University

Well sorry geniuses, but ole Marilyn is right, and don't you feel like giant dumbasses?

So anyway, the graph at the top of the post I think best illustrates how Marilyn is right. There is a mathematical equation that proves it as well, but you have to be some kind of real wiz to see it in those terms and so I will save us all the brain damage and present it visually.

So going back to the graph we can see the consequences of each possible selection . If you choose curtain 1 and stay with your choice when given the option to change, you will get a goat, but if you CHANGE then you get a car. So moving to the next possible choice, curtain number 2. If you choose curtain 2, you can see that by sticking with you choice you would again get a goat, but if you CHANGE you once again get the car. You follow me? So of the two possible choices so far, curtain 1 or curtain 2 when given the option to change and change indeed you do... you get the car.

Ok so let's move on to the third possible choice. Curtain number 3 where in this case if you stay you get the car and you if you change you get the goat.

So to recap, that 1 times of out 3 if you change you get the goat in other words 2/3 times you change you get the car... just like Marilyn said. Capiche bitches!

Cool rainbow

A bad ass rainbow was recently spotted over Idaho and you can see and read about all about it right here and I suggest you do as you never know when some such bit of triva will save your ass when you need to suddenly change the subject or as in my case, give you the perfect inside moment with some LA 9. To wit: This morning I was at the cafe downstairs from my office when this super-cute chick got in line behind me. I'd seen her around the office park a few times before and figured she was a new student at the flight school since she was always with one of the teacher pilots that are constantly hanging around the cafe. I made up mind that I would talk to her at some point and was just waiting for the perfect natural moment to arise. So when she stepped into the line behind me, I said to myself, in a thick cockney accent, "Well Governor, here's your bloody chance." Clearing my throat, I spun around flashing my very best Neal Patrick Harris smile and asked her if she was a student at the flight school? She looked up and forced a small smile and said yes that she was and then asked me, no doubt, her creep radar kicking into high gear, how I knew that? Taken slightly aback, I stammered saying I had seen her walking around with some of the pilots and just kind of put it all together. That seemed to quell her creep sucspions somewhat, but it was clear that the jury was still out. Desperate to change the subject from my observations of her, I reached for my Ace in the Hole. "So you must see a lot rainbows while you're flying around up there?" The look she gave me let me know that in her mind I was definately a creep. "Umm...no," she said, I've actually never seen a rainbow while flying." And before I could respond, a tall tan GQ type comes walking up and gives her a huge hug, taking her into his arms and spinning her merrily around her face lighting up like a carnival. At which point I just backed off figuring it had to be her brother or some other close relative given the sweet embrace. Anyway, maybe this was a bad example, but you can see the potential, right?

Baja Beach Party

Here's my boy Earl, groovin' with a glow in the dark hula-hoop on the beaches of Baja.

Does anyone remember the name of that beautiful hippy dippy dreamboat queen who set us all up with mojitas?

Beat the clock

Need something to do besides work, burnout on email and just plain sick of all your favorite websites. Well, try this out for size and waste all kinds of otherwise valuable work time.

Meat is Murder?

While I'm no longer a vegetarian, I still often cringe at the idea of eating dead corpses and when that happens I usually lay off nimbling at the flesh for a good long spell. Right now I'm about 90% veggie and 10% carniwhore, but if it were grown in a lab, I'm might feel a whole helluva lot better about eating the quivering flesh of animals.

Check out this article from Slate: Lab Meat

It's hard not to respect him.

Al Gore is Back

With the release of his stunning new documentary, An inconvenient Truth, Al Gore bounds back into center stage and has never looked so good.

It is hard not to respect Gore. He has bags of experience. He has been ahead of the curve on a lot of big issues that other politicians have missed or fumbled. He was right about the internet and right about climate change - and still is. He was a Democratic moderate before Bill Clinton. He was right about the first Gulf war - he was in favour - when many in his party were wrong. More strikingly still, he was right about the second Gulf war too - this time he was against - when the bulk of his party got it wrong again. And then there was the 2000 election. It should have been him. And it would have been if he had got one more supreme court justice on his side. And if he had succeeded, the history of the last six years would have been very different

Another 420 misnomer knocked down

Smoke Out Cancer

The largest study ever conducted on the link between cancer and marijuana usage leads to some suprising conclusions.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.
"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

The Future is Now!

Believe it or not, scientist from the United States and England are apparently very close to inventing an invisible cloak.

Yes, you could actually make someone invisible as long as someone wears a cloak made of this material," said Patanjali Parimi, a Northeastern University physicist and design engineer at Chelton Microwave Corp. in Bolton, Mass. Parimi was not involved in the research.