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My Second Review

By jrosenhouse on May 15, 2009.

Jeffrey Shallit was kind enough to mention my book over at his blog. He writes:

A pleasant surprise arrived in the mail today: Jason Rosenhouse's new book, The Monty Hall Problem. I read a first draft of the book and found it excellent.

The second draft is even better, thanks in large part to Jeffrey's heroic proofreading efforts.

Alf van der Poorten says that the definition of a good book is that it mentions you. Under that criterion, this is a very good book indeed, as I appear on the back cover, giving the book an endorsement.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in probability.

Which provides a welcome opportunity to publicly thank Jeffrey for the endorsement.

Actually, his comment reminds me of something Michael Kinsley once said about political books. He said that any time a new book is published everyone in politics rushes out to give it a “Washington read.” That means looking your name up in the index as a measure of how important you are.

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Mathematics
Politics

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"Washington read"! I love it. Its what I do with any book that covers my field (although I use Google Books to avoid having to read the whole thing) :-) I've been cited by a few, too.

In Beyond the Hoax, Alan Sokal explains that one of his guiding principles in crafting the nonsensical article which made his name a verb was David Lodge's law of academia: "It is impossible to be excessive in flattery of one's peers."

This problem is so counter intuitive (too some) that when I asked my friend about it who has a degree in statistics, he didn't believe me.

I myself have found a way to realise it though, intuitively. The original probability doesn't change. I find if you amplify it and make say 50 doors, people understand it more intutively.