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Comment by kangnkodos | Hacker News Reader

The key was... did Marilyn vos Savant state in her version of the problem that the host always uses an algorithm to open a door with a goat? (The alternative was that the host randomly picked a door, and this one time it happened to be a goat.) I read some of her articles on this topic, and my opinion was that in some of her articles, she did not state what the host's algorithm was.

So, yes, even a person with the world's highest IQ can make a mistake.

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Her column was written for an audience that was familiar with the show. Monty Hall had, at that point, been opening doors and revealing goats-but-not-cars to contestants five days a week for more than twenty years.

But as Monty Hall himself notes, the game show rules did not actually require him to open a door.

> Hall clarified that as a game show host he did not have to follow the rules of the puzzle in the vos Savant column and did not always have to allow a person the opportunity to switch (e.g., he might open their door immediately if it was a losing door, might offer them money to not switch from a losing door to a winning door, or might only allow them the opportunity to switch if they had a winning door).

If the host uses an adversarial strategy, such as only offers a switch when the remaining door is a goat, switching is not necessarily wise.

Most people understood the intent of the question exactly, and still found the answer unintuitive.

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