Then, what would the high end of the second range need to be to get you to change your mind (assuming the low end is fixed at zero)?
I'm not in need of that much money, so the 1 million guarantee is not valuable enough to me to offset the fact that I would have 50%+ chance of getting something more than 2.5 million.
high end of $2,100,000 on the second case is enough for me to switch to the second one.
500K? 100K?
I'm ok with this :-)
If you're already comfortable, the random amount has a better expected return.
I guess another interesting question instead of adjusting the range of the random outcome would be to scale the whole thing. Say you'd take the million. What about 10k vs 0-50k? My expectation is that the responses would be more consistent (ie less dependent on size relative to net worth) than you'd think.