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/sci/ - Science & Math

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7378138 No.7378138 [Reply] [Original]

Here's a question that I've been told couple of days ago, I'll paraphrase it here.

You're on the 'Who wants to be a millionaire?', and the host just opened the million dollar question. You have all 3 lifelines available.

The host asks the question and out of the 4 answers, the one you thought of before you even saw them shows up and you believe you know the answer. Also, let's assume the 'call a friend' won't help and neither will 'ask audience'. So now you're left with the 50:50 lifeline as potential help. You have 2 options, either answer straight away or use the 50:50 lifeline, even though it will reduce the 'coolness' factor of winning a million without using a single lifeline.

So the question here is, will using 50:50 lifeline improve your chance of winning a million, provided of course that even though you believe you know the answer it might not be a correct one.

Let's assume that the answer you believe is correct will stay as the 2 remaining answers 50% of the time, and after seeing that you would answer it and have a 50% chance of being correct, but since you would've answered it anyway, the chance to actually be correct doesn't change.

On the other hand, in the remaining 50% of cases, the answer you thought was true is no longer there, therefore you have a new 50% chance of being correct, giving you a total of 25% chance to be correct, so pretty much the same as before the lifeline, so basically it's a useless lifeline then, right?

>> No.7378179

no.. of course your odds increase when using the 50:50 unless you're 100% sure already.

>> No.7378851

>>7378179
Not if the Monty Hall problem is true, which it is.

>> No.7378883

You're going to pick your answer no matter what anyway, HOWEVER if your answer is wrong AND the 50/50 eliminates it you saved yourself from picking the wrong answer, therefore your chances go up. Then you have an exactly 50/50 chance of winning, assuming you don't have any other guesses.

>> No.7378927
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7378927

>>7378138
OP, as always, is retarded.

>> No.7378985

>>7378851
these aren't random variables though. They are questions and you can have a certain confidence that each one is correct.

eliminating half of them makes the decisinon making process easier, unless you have equal confidence in all of them, or have 100% confidence in one of them.

>> No.7378990

>>7378985
by 'each one' i mean 'each answer'

>> No.7378998

No, the chance of winning is still 50%: either you will or you won't.

>> No.7379011

Assume the competitor doesn't know the answer and uses 50:50. The computer then removes two wrong answers. Now they don't know yet either but have some subjective ideas like "always pick C if you can" or something. This can be avoided if they close their eyes, think of some property within the audience and answer by seeing if the people have the chosen property or not, eg. "there are more men than women". If chosen like this, 50:50 helps, otherwise they cloud their own judgment with subjective stuff.

>> No.7379021 [DELETED] 

>>7378927
>giving you a total of 25% chance to be correct
You made a typo of 75%
>so pretty much the same as before the lifeline
Nonsense overload

>> No.7379024

>>7378138
>giving you a total of 25% chance to be correct
You made a typo of 75%
>so pretty much the same as before the lifeline
Nonsense overload