Monty Hall Paradox!

I was lying in bed last night, wondering how the Monty Hall paradox can be explained well, and figured it could only happen if i change my perception a bit.

What is the Monty Hall problem? well he is a game show host.. of the show called “Deal or No Deal” .. [the copy of it is made in indian TV as well.. i dnt remember the name of the game, but Aman Verma was the host as far as i remember] Anyway, back to the problem,

Consider three doors. Behind one is a car, and behind two others are goats. You are asked to choose one door – if it’s the one with the car, you win. otherwise, you lose.

you choose one car. Then Monty (the gameshow host) opens one of the other doors to show a goat behind it. You are given the chance to change your choice of door to the other closed one – should you?

The answer is Yes. the /intuitive/ answer is that there is a 50% chance either way, but mathematically, there is actually a 66% chance.

Took me a good few minutes to figure out how to verify it. I kept thinking of it as “there is a 33% chance of me picking the right one. door opens. I now have… 50%?”. Couldn’t seem to make the leap for some reason.

That was a result of wrong perception – you need to think of it from the point of view of what is /not/ the right door.

1. choose one door. the chance of the car being behind one of the other doors is 66%.
2. one of the other doors opens. the chance is still 66%!.
3. You now have two closed doors. the door you /did not originally choose/ has a higher chance than the one you did choose, so you should switch.

well.. wikipedia explains it much better than me.. so here is the link..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem.

The interesting fact is, it actually makes me question the perception norms.
does it to you?

 
August 9th, 2008 Blog 0 Comment

An intelligent indian brain… a must read.

An Indian man walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to India on business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.

The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Indian man hands over the keys of a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checks out. The loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan.

The bank’s president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the Indian for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the Indian returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41.The loan officer says, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire. What puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow “$5,000″

The Indian replies: “Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return’”

 
April 3rd, 2008 Blog 1 Comment

Bah – Just a Forward

but a very very superb one. intelligent and hilarious. let me just post it here so that my readers can enjoy it too.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English” .

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kanhave one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where! more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

 
October 4th, 2007 Blog 0 Comment

Really Permanent!!

Ridiculously hilarious i must say!!! Watch!! :D

 
August 23rd, 2007 Blog 0 Comment