Jack comments on Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way) - Less Wrong
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While the overall probabilities for the game will never change, the contestant’s perception of the current state of the game will cause them to affect their win rate. To elaborate on what I was saying, imagine the following internal monologue of a contestant:
I’ve eliminated one goat. Two doors left. One is a goat, one is a car. No way to tell which is which, so I’ll just randomly pick one.
IMO, this is probably what most contestants believe when faced with the final choice. Obviously, there is a way to have a greater success rate, but this person is evaluating in a vacuum. If contestants were aware of the actual probabilities involved, I think we would see less “agonizing” moments as the contestants decide if they should switch or not. By randomly picking door A or B, irrespective of the entirety game, you’ve lost your marginal advantage and lowered your win rate. That being said, if they still “randomly” pick switch every their win rate will be the expected, actual probability.
Edit: The same behaviour can be seen in Deal or No Deal. If for some insane reason, they go all the way to the final two cases, the correct choice is to switch. I don’t know exactly how many cases you have to choose from, but the odds are greatly against you that you picked the 1k case. If the case is still on the board, the chick is holding it. Yet, people make the choice to switch based entirely on the fact that there are two cases and 1 has 1k and the other has 0.01. They think they have a 50/50 shot, so they make their odds essentially 50/50 by randomly choosing. In other words, they might as well as have flipped a coin to make the decision between the two cases.
Actually, I just realized... there is no reason to swap on Deal or No Deal. The reason why you swap in Monty Hall is that Monty knows which door has the goats and there is no chance he will open a door to reveal a car. But in Deal or No Deal the cases that get opened are chosen by the contestant with no knowledge of what is inside them. It's like if the contestant got to pick which of the two remaining doors to open instead of Monty, there is a 1/3 chance the contestant would open the door with the car leaving her with only goats to choose from. The fact the the contestant got lucky and didn't open the door with the car wouldn't tell her anything about which of the two remaining doors the car is really behind.
ETA: Basically Deal or No Deal is just a really boring game.
Well, it's exciting for those who like high-stakes randomness. And there are expected utility considerations at every opportunity for a deal (I don't remember if there's a consistent best choice based on the typical deal).
Maybe it could be interesting if you treat it as a psychology game - trying to predict, based on the person's appearance, body language, and statements, whether they will conform to expected-utility or not?
I was talking about this in my other comment.