Wizard of Odds

[Dbacksfan12]

While doing some research on casino gaming, I came across a website called the Wizard of Odds.  He has a decent article on game show payouts for games such as Deal or No Deal and The Price is Right.

Whether you agree with him or not is up to you...

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'144574\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 05:20 AM\']
Whether you agree with him or not is up to you...[/quote]
Actually, he seems to have things pretty accurate from a statistical POV.

[Ian Wallis]

What he says does make sense, and it's interesting reading.  However, if I was in that situation I'd probably still stay with the case/curtain that I chose - because I'd hate to make the switch and then find out I had it all along.

I must say that after seeing the title of this thread, my first thought was that it was about the 1973-74 Alex Trebek game show of the same name!

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'144574\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 02:20 AM\']Whether you agree with him or not is up to you...[/quote]The great thing about numbers is that they don't lie. Given a field of numbers, you can make them do lots of nifty things.

The problem is that if you have an unscrupulous person doing the manipulating, then the results can likewise be misleading.

Let's say that I field a pro baseball team of Edgar Martinez and 24 hobos. Out of my $10 million payroll, each hobo gets $10,000 a year and Edgar gets the remaining $9,760,000. I could say that I'm paying everyone an average of $400,000 a year, since you add up the elements and divide by 25. Presto! I look like a great guy, because it sounds like the hobos are living it up and using $100 bills to light their oil drum fires.

If you take the median (or mode) of that list, the 'average' suddenly plummets to $10,000; well below the poverty line.

I've read the guy's work. He's on the up and up. There's nothing to agree or disagree with him about.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'144580\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 08:47 AM\']
What he says does make sense, and it's interesting reading.  However, if I was in that situation I'd probably still stay with the case/curtain that I chose - because I'd hate to make the switch and then find out I had it all along.
[/quote]
If you're talking about the Monty Hall problem, that's a very interesting perspective.  You're saying that even though you know you have twice as good a chance to win if you switch, you won't switch because you've become emotionally invested in your original choice.  Monty would love you, but don't go into mathematics as a career.

[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'144591\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 11:19 AM\']
Let's say that I field a pro baseball team of Edgar Martinez and 24 hobos. Out of my $10 million payroll, each hobo gets $10,000 a year and Edgar gets the remaining $9,760,000. I could say that I'm paying everyone an average of $400,000 a year, since you add up the elements and divide by 25. Presto! I look like a great guy, because it sounds like the hobos are living it up and using $100 bills to light their oil drum fires. [/quote]
Put another way, a statistician is someone who has one foot in a bucket of boiling water and the other foot in a bucket of ice water, and says he feels fine.

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'144594\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 08:31 AM\'][quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'144580\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 08:47 AM\']What he says does make sense, and it's interesting reading.  However, if I was in that situation I'd probably still stay with the case/curtain that I chose - because I'd hate to make the switch and then find out I had it all along.[/quote]If you're talking about the Monty Hall problem, that's a very interesting perspective.  You're saying that even though you know you have twice as good a chance to win if you switch, you won't switch because you've become emotionally invested in your original choice.  Monty would love you, but don't go into mathematics as a career.[/quote] Which also comes up on Deal or No Deal. If you pick a number because of some personal significance, wouldn't you be more likely to stick with that number throughout the game? (Of course we all know that one number is as good as anything, and what's on the outside of the case isn't important, but we're also not the type of contestants on the show.)

If someone is given the chance to Swap, they're going to keep a number they feel attached to, as opposed to whatever happened to be last on the risers. You're not going to get that sort of bond with shapes, letters, or anything else. It's the same reason people pick particular lottery numbers every week. They're just as likely as every other number to come out, but the players feel like the numbers are "theirs."

Sneaky guys at Endemol.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'144595\' date=\'Jan 26 2007, 11:41 AM\']If someone is given the chance to Swap, they're going to keep a number they feel attached to, as opposed to whatever happened to be last on the risers. You're not going to get that sort of bond with shapes, letters, or anything else. [/quote]
Agreed, but the difference is that there is no statistical advantage for you to switch the last two boxes on DoND, so keep the number that makes you happy.  There is a huge advantage to switching on the Monty Hall Problem.

[Robert Hutchinson]

I was all set to object to the Showcase Showdown odds (at the very bottom of the page), when I realized something I had never taken into account before. I had always done thumbnail odds for the "second player on 55" without considering that, even with a second spin between 05 and 45, there would still be chances for him to lose. I'm still posting this only to point out that there's now a whole new category of my previous posts that are newly embarrassing.