Monday, November 05, 2007

Deal or no deal

Watching this program makes me wish full on Charlton Heston biblical plagues upon the world.

This guy simply sums up the major problems

Playing the game boils down to
1. Do an average on the remaining boxes and expect an offer of this much.
2. If you get offered a small bit less then this but really need the money accept the offer.
3. Do not ask people who look lucky to help you when they open their sealed box. They have no effect on the box you idiot.

2. is interesting because it implies people who are poor sometimes have to accept sub optimal choices. By this I mean if someone offers me 1000 euro and I refuse based on the "correct" play I might feel annoyed but I will be ok, however if i needed the money to pay my rent I would probably have to take it.

However if I lost 1,000,000 playing correctly I would have acted like an idiot. Maybe this is to do with moneys marginal utility in that if you do not have much money a small amount can really help and if you have a lot even a large increase is of not that much benefit.

1 comment:

Luke McKinney said...

This post demonstrates why your stuff is worth reading (and you writing). Even when in the grip of incandescent rage - and I got to see it closer to ground zero when you were talking about it - you still rationally analyze the situation, even putting forward reasons whey people do what they do.

This puts you above 99% of the internet, so keep it up.