Marilyn Vos Savant, who brought the Monty Hall Problem to public view, stirs the probability pot again with this Sunday magazine problem asking which result is the more likely outcome from 20 throws of a die: a) 11111111111111111111 or b) 66234441536125563152
http://tinyurl.com/3zsb7tf
[Addendum: I've now gotten around to reading many of the comments to the above link, and interestingly, once again Marilyn has opened a can of worms. Her logic/math is correct, yet many misinterpret the problem and once again think she is wrong, as they did originally in the case of the Monty Hall Problem.
The problem reminds me slightly of Newcomb's Paradox where a notion of 'backwards causation' comes into play to confuse the issues; except that Newcomb's Paradox is essentially unresolved, whereas this dice problem is clearly resolvable.]
1 comment:
well, if I was told that a series of actual tosses of an actual die gave either 11111111111111111111 or 66234441536125563152 I would say that the more probable is the first one and that the die is loaded (or maybe all its faces bear 1)
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