The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman

[Derived Absurdity]

I thought this article was pretty funny.

http://priceonomics.com/the-time-everyo ... -smartest/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Even funnier are all the people in the comments still convinced she's wrong and trying to disprove her. Lol.

[Gendo]

There were people at the Pit years ago that argued about this, including, I believe, GI. A couple years ago I read an article that was pretty much the exact same thing as this one.

[aels]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was GI. I think Brandon yelled at him. I hope so, anyway.

[Derived Absurdity]

If you're referring to GayIthican I remember him as being a complete asshole. I can't even think of any specific thing he did, I just generally remember him as being an asshole.

[aels]

That about covers it. He could be very chill and personable and we got on fine but he also had an arrogant streak a mile wide and would almost never admit to making mistakes, and his refusal to back down on silly things he said led to a few board memes.

[Gendo]

GI was a weird mix. Kind of like worov, except where worov was perfectly friendly 10% of the time and then a complete jerk the other 90%; GI was about 50/50. His only real issue was a complete lack of ability to every admit to any mistake; along with an extreme arrogance with pointing out the mistakes of others (especially when "correcting" something that was already correct).

[Derived Absurdity]

He seemed to me just like the type of person who would send Marilyn vos Savant a correcting letter. And then never, ever back down after being proven wrong.

[Dr_Liszt]

I liked GI!

But he did act like an asshole to me a couple of times.

AND NO HE IS NOT DEAD GODAMMIT! At least last time I checked.

[Gendo]

He's not dead. He's posted a few times on IMDB over the last few months. I've tried to contact him there with no response.

[Dr_Liszt]

He's not dead. He's posted a few times on IMDB over the last few months. I've tried to contact him there with no response.

I sent him a fb message once and a youtube one, it was about an important issue, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. But he ignored me. I risked my Bourne Identity for him and he ignored me!!!

[CashRules]

This whole thing could have easily been avoided if her publisher hired a man to do her job.

[Gendo]

I don't like the description of the problem in that article. Though it says that the host "knows what's going on," it doesn't specify that he ALWAYS opens a goat door; that he ensures that he's never opening the car door. This is an important piece of the puzzle. If the host just opens an unchosen door at random, or sometimes reveals a car and sometimes reveals a goat, then the 2/3 thing doesn't work.

(That's the bit that GI was arguing about I think. He wasn't wrong about the actual Monty Hall problem, but he was wrong about the modified version where the host opens one of the unchosen doors at random.)

[Ptolemy_Banana]

Even funnier are all the people in the comments still convinced she's wrong and trying to disprove her. Lol.

As the article points out, the answer is non-intuitive, people are generally poor at probability problems, and cognitive dissonance is something we all experience from time to time. Given that some very intelligent, highly-educated people strongly disagreed with her, it's hardly surprising that commenters on an article might still do so.

[phe_de]

I don't like the description of the problem in that article. Though it says that the host "knows what's going on," it doesn't specify that he ALWAYS opens a goat door; that he ensures that he's never opening the car door. This is an important piece of the puzzle. If the host just opens an unchosen door at random, or sometimes reveals a car and sometimes reveals a goat, then the 2/3 thing doesn't work.

(That's the bit that GI was arguing about I think. He wasn't wrong about the actual Monty Hall problem, but he was wrong about the modified version where the host opens one of the unchosen doors at random.)

In Germany, a journalist wrote an entire book about the Monty Hall problem.
http://www.amazon.de/Das-Ziegenproblem- ... ref=sr_1_1

I own this book, and in the first chapter, the author mentions that problem; that we don't know what rules the moderator follows.
But the point of the non-intuitivity still stands; if the rules are that the host always opens a goat door, and if we assume that the guest wants to win the car rather than a goat, then the guest would do better to switch doors.
This problem has also found its way to teacher's training, because it's a challenge to explain this problem to children.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

well - I'm happy to admit that I didn't actually really understand the answer the first time this reared its head on the pit.

The description with the 100 doors did the job - all hail the power of the person who understands an issue well enuff to explain the answer in a persuasive way

[Monk]

I don't like the description of the problem in that article. Though it says that the host "knows what's going on," it doesn't specify that he ALWAYS opens a goat door; that he ensures that he's never opening the car door. This is an important piece of the puzzle. If the host just opens an unchosen door at random, or sometimes reveals a car and sometimes reveals a goat, then the 2/3 thing doesn't work.

(That's the bit that GI was arguing about I think. He wasn't wrong about the actual Monty Hall problem, but he was wrong about the modified version where the host opens one of the unchosen doors at random.)

Meh, while true, it's pretty much implied. No game show host would open a door with the car behind it. I think it was GI just trying to no admit he was wrong, as per usual.