The Three Doors of Serendip: Resources

"Mr. Jeavons said that I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end... Here is a famous story called The Monty Hall Problem... if you use your intution you think that chance is 50-50 because you think there is an equal chance that the car is behind any door... And this shows that intution can sometimes get things wrong. It also shows that Mr. Jeavons was wrong and numbers are sometimes very complicated and not very straightforward at all. And that is why I like The Monty Hall Problem."

- Christopher on The Monty Hall Problem from Mark Haddon's
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Listed here are resources of interest to The Three Door Problem (also known as The Monty Hall Dilemma or the Let's Make a Deal Game), including the history of the problem, various ways to think about the problem, and related games.

Original Article from Marylin Vos Savant's column in Parade Magazine 1990

A new approach to the Monty Hall problem

Cut The Knot's simulation and discussion

UCSD Mathematics Department discussion

Simulation from UCSD, chose a strategy and plug in number of trials; what happens when the host doesn't know which door the prize is behind?

Discussion of the problem as a card game

Articles from The Straight Dope 1990/1991

Hofstra University discussion and simulation which calculates probability as you play

Harry's Monty Hall Page

Simulation which allows you to see where the prize is before you start the game

DCity simulation

Cross-cultural comparison of respones to the Monty Hall dilemma

Frequency vs. Probability Formats: Framing the Three Doors Problem

An Exchange on Bayesian Inference and Formal Axiomatic Systems, an exchange on Serendip

Illusions, ambiguous figures, and impossible figures: informed guessing and beyond, on Serendip, see section on The "Bayesian Brain" and "Free-energy"

An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning

To Switch or Not To Switch?

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