Monty Hall Problem from a Movie
Time flies and it has been two years since my last post. Somehow this important pastime has not seen much investment of my time in Hong Kong. I was watching the movie 21 the other night, which was about a team of MIT students breaking bank at Vegas casinos. The movie was entertaining as it has (some) action, romance, a twist, and most importantly, math, packed into two hours of lights-out. I learnt how to improve your odds at Blackjack, by working in a team and assigning a count to a table based on the number of dealt high and low cards. The part that really caught my attention however, was when professor Rosa was teaching the Monty Hall problem through his interaction with his A-student and soon-to-be recruit, Ben Campbell. This problem is often depicted in the form of a game show. The grand prize, a car, is waiting behind one of three closed doors. When the contestant picks Door A, the game show host, who knows exactly which door the car is behind, opens a door that is e