jollityfarm:

tilthat:

TIL that the solution of the Monty Hall problem (that asks to pick one of three doors to win a car, the picked door remains closed and the third one opens, then asks if you want to switch or not) is so counterintuitive that mathematician Paul Erdos was unconvinced until he saw a simulation of it

via reddit.com

but pigeons, it turns out, can solve it handily

I think the difficulty is that it looks like a math problem,
but since the game-show host *knows* which door has the sports car, and
is taking care not to reveal it ahead of time, it’s not random. It’s really more
like a psychology problem.

I once saw someone explain it by saying “Ok, if there were *ten*
doors, you picked one, and then the host opened all but one of the nine
remaining doors, you’d be pretty quick to switch your choice to that door they carefully
avoided opening, wouldn’t you?”