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Monty Hall Problem
The Monty Hall problem is a brain teaser, in the form of a probability puzzle, based nominally on the American television game show ''Let's Make a Deal'' and named after its original host, Monty Hall. The problem was originally posed (and solved) in a letter by Steve Selvin to the ''The American Statistician, American Statistician'' in 1975. It became famous as a question from reader Craig F. Whitaker's letter quoted in Marilyn vos Savant's "Ask Marilyn" column in ''Parade (magazine), Parade'' magazine in 1990: Savant's response was that the contestant should switch to the other door. By the standard assumptions, the switching strategy has a probability of winning the car, while the strategy of keeping the initial choice has only a probability. When the player first makes their choice, there is a chance that the car is behind one of the doors not chosen. This probability does not change after the host reveals a goat behind one of the unchosen doors. When the host provides i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monty Open Door
Monty is a masculine given name, often a short form of Montgomery, Montague and other similar names. It is also a surname. Notable people with the name or nickname include: Nickname *Bernard Montgomery (1887–1976), British Second World War field marshal *Bruce Montgomery (musical director) (1927–2008), American music composer and former director of the Penn Glee Club *Chris Montgomery (born 1972), American computer specialist and founder of the Xiph.Org Foundation *Colin Montgomerie (born 1963), Scottish golfer * Monty Montgomery (American football) (born 1973), former American football cornerback * Richard Montgomerie (1999–2007), Sussex cricketer * Monty Basgall (1922–2005), American Major League Baseball player and coach * Monty Berman (1905–2006), British cinematographer and film and television producer * Monty Bowden (1865–1892), English cricketer and wicket-keeper * Monty Burton (1918–1999), British pilot *Montgomery Clift (1920–1966), American actor * Mon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Prize-winners being featured since its inception. In print since 1845, it is the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States. ''Scientific American'' is owned by Springer Nature, which is a subsidiary of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. History ''Scientific American'' was founded by inventor and publisher Rufus Porter (painter), Rufus Porter in 1845 as a four-page weekly newspaper. The first issue of the large-format New York City newspaper was released on August 28, 1845. Throughout its early years, much emphasis was placed on reports of what was going on at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, U.S. Patent Office. It also reported on a broad range of inventions including perpetual motion machines, an 1860 devi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conditional Probabilities
In probability theory, conditional probability is a measure of the probability of an event occurring, given that another event (by assumption, presumption, assertion or evidence) is already known to have occurred. This particular method relies on event A occurring with some sort of relationship with another event B. In this situation, the event A can be analyzed by a conditional probability with respect to B. If the event of interest is and the event is known or assumed to have occurred, "the conditional probability of given ", or "the probability of under the condition ", is usually written as or occasionally . This can also be understood as the fraction of probability B that intersects with A, or the ratio of the probabilities of both events happening to the "given" one happening (how many times A occurs rather than not assuming B has occurred): P(A \mid B) = \frac. For example, the probability that any given person has a cough on any given day may be only 5%. But if we know ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Status Quo Bias
A status quo bias or default bias is a cognitive bias which results from a preference for the maintenance of one's existing state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss or gain. Corresponding to different alternatives, this current baseline or default option is perceived and evaluated by individuals as a positive. Status quo bias should be distinguished from a rational preference for the status quo, as for when the current state of affairs is more beneficial to the available alternatives, or when imperfect information is a significant problem. A large body of evidence, however, shows that status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making. Status quo bias should also be distinguished from psychological inertia, which refers to a lack of intervention in the current course of affairs. The bias intersects with other non-rational cognitive processes such as loss aversion, in which l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endowment Effect
In psychology and behavioral economics, the endowment effect, also known as divestiture aversion, is the finding that people are more likely to retain an object they own than acquire that same object when they do not own it. The endowment theory can be defined as "an application of prospect theory positing that loss aversion associated with ownership explains observed exchange asymmetries." This is typically illustrated in two ways. In a valuation paradigm, people's maximum willingness to pay (WTP) to acquire an object is typically lower than the least amount they are willing to accept (WTA) to give up that same object when they own it—even when there is no cause for attachment, or even if the item was only obtained minutes ago. In an exchange paradigm, people given a good are reluctant to trade it for another good of similar value. For example, participants first given a pen of equal expected value to that of a coffee mug were generally unwilling to trade, whilst participants f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which held from the 1920s to 1950s that unobservable mental processes were outside the realm of empirical science. This break came as researchers in linguistics and cybernetics, as well as applied psychology, used models of mental processing to explain human behavior. Work derived from cognitive psychology was integrated into other branches of psychology and various other modern disciplines like cognitive science, linguistics, and economics. History Philosophically, ruminations on the human mind and its processes have been around since the times of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks. In 387 BCE, Plato had suggested that the brain was the seat of the mental processes. In 1637, René Descartes posited that humans are born with innate ideas and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shell Game
The shell game (also known as thimblerig, three shells and a pea, the old army game) is a public gambling game that challenges players to follow the movement of a marker hidden under one of several covers (shells). In practice, the game is almost always run as a confidence trick that uses sleight of hand to transfer the marker between covers. In confidence trick slang, this swindle is referred to as a ''short-con'' because it is quick and easy to pull off. The shell game is related to the cups and balls conjuring trick, which is performed purely for entertainment purposes without any purported gambling element. Play In the shell game, three or more identical containers (which may be cups, shells, bottle caps, or anything else) are placed face-down on a surface. A small ball is placed beneath one of these containers so that it cannot be seen, and they are then shuffled by the operator in plain view. One or more players are invited to bet on which container holds the ball – ty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Straight Dope
''The Straight Dope'' was a question-and-answer newspaper column written under the pseudonym Cecil Adams. Contributions were made by multiple authors, and it was illustrated (also pseudonymously) by Slug Signorino. It was first published in 1973 in the ''Chicago Reader'' as well as in print syndication nationally in the United States, and on a website with the same name. The final column was printed on June 27, 2018, including a statement that it was only being placed on hiatus, though the column has not returned. Name and tagline The column derives its name from the American idiom meaning roughly "the true information; the full story" and covers many subjects, including history, science, old wives' tales, urban legends, and inventions. The column appeared under the tagline In entertainment, a tagline (alternatively spelled tag line) is a short text which serves to clarify a thought for, or is designed with a form of, dramatic effect. Many tagline slogans are reiterated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doctor Of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original research. The name of the degree is most often abbreviated PhD (or, at times, as Ph.D. in North American English, North America), pronounced as three separate letters ( ). The University of Oxford uses the alternative abbreviation "DPhil". PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Since it is an earned research degree, those studying for a PhD are required to produce original research that expands the boundaries of knowledge, normally in the form of a Thesis, dissertation, and, in some cases, defend their work before a panel of other experts in the field. In many fields, the completion of a PhD is typically required for employment as a university professor, researcher, or scientist. Definition In the context o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Devlin
Keith James Devlin (born 16 March 1947) is a British mathematician and popular science writer. Since 1987 he has lived in the United States. He has dual British-American citizenship.Curriculum vitae Profkeithdevlin.com, accessed 3 February 2014. Education He was born and grew up in England, in Kingston upon Hull, where he attended Greatfield Estate, Kingston upon Hull#Schools, Greatfield High School. Devlin earned a BSc (special) in mathematics at King's College London in 1968, and a mathematics PhD in logic at the University of Bristol in 1971 under the supervision of Frederick Rowbottom.Career Later he got a position as a scientific assistant in mathematics at the University of Oslo, Norway, from August till December 1972. In 1974 he became a scientific assist ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cecil Adams
Cecil Adams, affectionately known to readers and fans and sometimes refers to himself as Uncle Cecil or Uncle Cece, is the pseudonymous author of ''The Straight Dope'', a popular question and answer column published in the ''Chicago Reader'' from 2 February 1973 to 2018. The true identity of Adams, whether a single individual or a group of authors, has remained secret. ''The Chicago Reader''s 1986 trademark filing for the name "Cecil Adams" states that "Cecil Adams does not identify any particular individual but was devised as a fanciful name." As of 2008, Ed Zotti was the editor of the column. The column was syndicated in 31 newspapers in the United States and Canada and has been continued as a website. The aim of the column, and now the website, is to spread general knowledge and everyday rational thinking, using a very strong and characteristically quirky sense of humor - some of it self-deprecating. Billed as the "World's Smartest Human", Adams responded to often unusual in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Independence (probability Theory)
Independence is a fundamental notion in probability theory, as in statistics and the theory of stochastic processes. Two event (probability theory), events are independent, statistically independent, or stochastically independent if, informally speaking, the occurrence of one does not affect the probability of occurrence of the other or, equivalently, does not affect the odds. Similarly, two random variables are independent if the realization of one does not affect the probability distribution of the other. When dealing with collections of more than two events, two notions of independence need to be distinguished. The events are called Pairwise independence, pairwise independent if any two events in the collection are independent of each other, while mutual independence (or collective independence) of events means, informally speaking, that each event is independent of any combination of other events in the collection. A similar notion exists for collections of random variables. M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
