| Heads I win |
| 07/18/20 Math |
"Imagine that I told you that that couple has two children, and that one of them is a girl. What are the odds that their other child is also a girl?"
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| The perfect bet |
| 08/13/18 Math |
"From the statisticians forecasting sports scores to the intelligent bots beating human poker players, Adam Kucharski traces the scientific origins of the world's best gambling strategies." [video]
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| Estimating the chances |
| 08/13/18 Math |
"The rule of three gives a quick and dirty way to estimate these kinds of probabilities. It says that if you've tested N cases and haven't found what you're looking for, a reasonable estimate is that the probability is less than 3/N."
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| Kelly coin tossing |
| 12/04/16 Math |
"Nothing sounds simpler than winning at such an outrageously rigged game. Yet, when it was played with real money in a controlled experiment, a surprising number of professional investors and finance students somehow managed to go bust." [$]
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| And behind door no. 1, a fatal flaw |
| 04/10/08 Academia Behaviour Math |
"The Monty Hall Problem has struck again, and this time it's not merely embarrassing mathematicians. If the calculations of a Yale economist are correct, there's a sneaky logical fallacy in some of the most famous experiments in psychology."
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| Behind Monty Hall's doors |
| 04/10/08 Behaviour Math |
"Mr. Hall continued: "Now do you see what happened there? The higher I got, the more you thought the car was behind Door 2. I wanted to con you into switching there, because I knew the car was behind 1. That's the kind of thing I can do when I'm in control of the game. You may think you have probability going for you when you follow the answer in her column, but there's the pyschological factor to consider." He proceeded to prove his case by winning the next eight rounds. Whenever the contestant began with the wrong door, Mr. Hall promptly opened it and awarded the goat; whenever the contestant started out with the right door, Mr. Hall allowed him to switch doors and get another goat. The only way to win a car would have been to disregard Ms. vos Savant's advice and stick with the original door. Was Mr. Hall cheating? Not according to the rules of the show, because he did have the option of not offering the switch, and he usually did not offer it."
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