Being a mathematician is cool again (at least for a couple of weeks).

http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/04/life-of-party.html

by getp • 18 years ago

13 7 18 years ago

weblog.fortnow.com

dnaquin3• 18 years ago

I was impressed that the movie used the Monty Hall problem. It's simple enough to get the point across quickly and easily. But challenges common sense.

Of course, any class of MIT seniors learning this is a huge disappointment.

getp• 18 years ago

Yeah, in my University (University of Amsterdam), they taught it in Stochastics 2, which is a second-year course in the Mathematics Bachelor.

geebee• 18 years ago

It challenges common sense, but I'm surprised it confused so many people. When I first heard it, I was sceptical enough that I wrote a program to simulate it. But once it was built, there was essentially no reason to run it. Once you break the possible outcome into all the cases, it's clear what the success ratio will be just from looking at the algorithm.

dnaquin3• 18 years ago

The reasons it works out are subtle: (a) the host must know what's behind the doors, (b)the host must always open a door to a goat.

Most people fail to keep into account one of those assumptions. In fact most tellings of the problem fail to specify and just implicitly assume one. This leads to most confusion.

I think the telling in the movie was pretty clear though.

arthurk• 18 years ago

This reminds me of Numbers, where they just throw some crazy looking math stuff on a chalkboard but never really explain it. I hope the movie is better than that!

Being a mathematician is cool again (at least for a couple of weeks).

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