Next Time |
I have instituted the "Class Agreement".
Now add your birthday (just month and day) to your card. We're about to find out!
Perhaps you have some other questions, which I hope that you'll take a moment to think about:
Even money? If so, then you would be saying that the probability of there being two people with the same birthday is 1/2.
You should only bet even money if the odds are in your favor...
"Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given a choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say number 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say number. 3, which has a goat. He says to you, `Do you want to pick door number 2?' Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?"
It's a famous problem, popularized in a Parade Magazine column by Marilyn vos Savant. Here's how the problem arose, according to the Let's Make a Deal website: The controversial "problem" began when Marilyn vos Savant published a puzzle in her Parade Magazine column. One of her readers posed the following question:
"Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given a choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say number 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say number. 3, which has a goat. He says to you, `Do you want to pick door number 2?' Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?"
Ms. Savant, who's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records Hall of Fame for "Highest IQ" (228), answered "Yes." She received an estimated 10,000 letters in response, many arguing that she was wrong.... Was she?