Things have been a little slow here during the last week or so, but for good reason. Between final exams, the in-laws stopping by for an extended visit, moving into a new apartment, and other miscellaneous events I have barely had time to sit down and write. After this weekend, though, I will be all set up in my new office, a separate room with a door! (It might not seem like a big deal to you, but if you lived where I have for the past three years, you would be thankful to have rooms actually separated by doors.) I can hardly wait to set up my library and start composing again! First up: a review of Darwin's Lost World and an essay about why paleoanthropology needed G.G. Simpson.
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Here is an interesting variation on the Monty Hall problem. For now I will simply present it cold, without indicating the context of where I saw it. Feel free to leave your proposed solutions in the comments. Everything from vague intuitions to hard-core Bayesian analysis is welcome.
Sorry for the sporadic blogging. For the past week I've been working on the Progressive Monty Hall problem, and it has proven to be considerably more complicated than I at first realized. I had expected to polish it off with a few hours work.
Speaking of the Monty Hall problem, I recently came across this terrific essay (PDF format), by Jeffrey Rosenthal, a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Toronto.
Here's an entirely hypothetical scenario.
You're in a room with two exits, marked Door A and Door B. By each is a guardian, Guardian A and Guardian B. You need to go through one of the doors.
Believe me, I sympathize. Forget doors; when my housemates and I moved into our current place, we didn't have walls.