Lambdia

The Monty Hall problem

Two doors left is not two equal doors: your first pick was frozen at 1/3 and the other 2/3 piled onto the single door still closed. The number is not a fact about doors, it is a fact about the host. Let him open a door at random instead, show the same goat, and switching is worth exactly 1/2.

Also asked asmonty hall · monty hall problem · three doors problem · should you switch doors

Read the full explanationSwitching Doors Wins 2/3 of the Time, and the Host's Rule Is the Whole Reason

Trading brainteasers

A Half, from One Multiplication and No Calculus

Multiplying by the conjugate turns the difference into x over the sum of the same two terms, exactly, with no series and no error term, and dividing through by x reads off the limit one half. Completing the square gives a constant excess of a quarter, so the gap climbs toward a half strictly from below and never reaches it.

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GeometryHigh SchoolExplainer9 min

One Eighteen Inch Pizza Beats a Twelve and a Ten, by a Corner

The factor pi over four cancels off both sides, so the comparison is 324 against 244, about a third more pizza. Written that way it is the law of cosines: lay the three widths out as a triangle and the corner between the two smaller sides opens to 109.47 degrees, wider than square, which is the answer with no arithmetic at all.

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