Wood Duck © Robert Sommers 2026
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
News and Information
For many years, statistics have shown a steady decline in newspaper readership. In fact, there seems to be a decline in people reading anything. Now as most of my friends, whom I assume are the only people reading this blog, can attest, I have been television free for about 16 years. But I am the penultimate information junkie.
I read the following newspapers print edition every day: North County Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times and San Diego Union. Hey with a job like mine, there's lots of free time! I also read these newspapers online, in a somewhat condensed version; the Washington Post and the New York Times. I also read TPM and the Huffington Post faithfully, as well as Dan Froomkin's column.
I am blessed to be a super fast reader, with fairly high comprehension. There are more online things I regularly check in on, like CNN and Google news, but these are my primary feeds. The San Jose Mercury is good for Tech stuff, the Economist and BBC for more highbrow fare.
The point of this post is a thought I have been knocking around. Newspaper readership is not dwindling necessarily because we have become a nation of illiterate morons, although that may also have a contributing effect. It is lower because we have outgrown the medium. To wit, we have outgrown the once a day, twenty four hour cycle for news. As technology has become so dazzling and immediate, we now must get our facts and infobits in real time or close to it. So consequently the news must be constantly updated.
I find myself checking out the news and e-mail on my blackberry (crackberry) at 2:30 in the morning when I have to pee. I am a total offender in the car but try not to text. I know that it is wrong! Find me a support group...
Now the facts are that print journalists tend to do a more thorough job than their perfectly coiffed, shiny toothed cathode cousins on television. Television is reduced to figures that can aggregate and explain what the raw information means to a tired, intellectually lazy populace. And with my limited viewing (trips to the inlaws and occasional hotel stays), I can say that it does a pretty piss poor job.
The days of my youth, with Huntley/Brinkley, Severaid and Cronkite are long gone. The new talking heads are pretty but vacuous. But I am getting too far off track...
I wonder if a giant hangover is approaching from this information overload? McLuhan would probably have a field day with this stuff. If I didn't get a phone call on the early morning of 9/11, I would have been in the dark. I remember the great political cartoonist Ron Cobb had a Free Press cartoon of an astronaut hanging on his tether and watching earth blow up, mouthing the words oh, shit...Or like the Japanese world war 2 straggler who pops up out of some Bornean jungle every decade or two. Maybe we would be better off doing the luddite thing? Many people I know are happy to get what I consider a very limited piece of the puzzle. Would that the unfortunate few like myself be so easily content.
We actually bought a television last week - comes tomorrow - a newfangled Sony XBR6. But I think that we will still hold out and not hook it up to a satellite (no cable in the boonies). Have a big enough information addiction already.
Love and have a great week!
The never ending collaborative novel - Chapter XIV
In 1939 Hollywood Producer Darryl Zanuck chartered a Santa Fe train from Los Angeles to bring John Ford, his actors, film crew and extras to Needles for the 20th Century Fox's filming of "The Grapes of Wrath." The director and the stars of the movie stayed at the El Garces Hotel during the filming of the Steinbeck classic. It was supposed to take a week of on-location filming, but it ended up taking nearly three weeks for the perfectionist Director Ford to get the right shots. Most the cast, including Henry Fonda, did not mind the delays, largely due to the Hotels impromptu parties, eloquent catering, plush suites and excellent service. But not all were happy about Ford and his film crews continually running in and out of the Hotel at all hours of the day, especially the Harvey Girls. Inebriated and horny Film crew members were flirting with and chasing the Harvey Girls around the hotel day and night. The bar was running out of liquor and some of the film cast trashed the hotels rooms with their wild all night parties.
Jujubee Johnson was the first and only black Harvey Girl that ever worked at the El Garces. Nobody knew where she came from or how a Negro girl could get a Harvey Girl job, but there she was, out in the middle of nowhere serving meals in the diner. She was a beautiful ebony woman with chocolate creamy hair and brown silky skin. She was six foot tall and had big almond shaped bedroom eyes. She had a nickname: 'Big Mama' Any red blooded American would take notice, and many of the El Garces male staff did. She took shit from no one. There was a shady rumor that Jujubee was making some side cash for entertaining some of the guest. Darryl Zanuck had a reputation for dating Hollywood starlets. Upon checking into the Hotel Darryl Zanuck's eyes instantly wandered toward the tall Negro Harvey Girl. Zanuck's assistants made arrangements with the front desk for Jujubee to be his personal room service waitress. For the next three weeks Zanuck and Jujubee were inseparable and they rarely left Zanuck's suite. Zanuck only made it to the location filming a couple of times!
Soon after Ford completed filming of the scenes of the Okies crossing the Topock bridge into the promised land of California they wasted no time to get the hell out of Needles. Crews quickly loaded up cameras, props, and the Joad's beat up jalopy onto the flatbed rail cars and the cast and crew boarded the chartered train back to Hollywood. Nobody ever saw Jujubee Johnson again. Some old timers say she was fired for her behavior and others say she told the Fred Harvey Management to fuck off. Some say Zanuck could not resist her brown sugar, so he took her back to Hollywood with him and bought her a love bungalow. Some Harvey Girls even mentioned the Hotels safe was broken into the on Jujubee's last night, but nobody knew for sure what happened. Rumor had it, the Hotel's vault was robbed of 100 lbs. of pure gold. The crusty old timers in Needles have a saying: Whatever happens in Needles stays in Needles.
by KVJ
Saturday, May 10, 2008
It's a Beautiful Day
One of the faves from my youth - playing at Acoustic Music San Diego - October 5, 2008
Buy tickets fast! Dinner?
Friday, May 9, 2008
Beirut, Iraq, Gaza
My local newspaper runs 5 or 6 letters a week from people castigating Israel. The israelis are modern day nazis, they aren't treating the palestinians fairly. They should open up their borders ( and when they do, notice that the crossings are immediately attacked in Hamas "military operations.") People evidently like to see the Israelis taking it on the chin.
I watch the news though and am taken with the really fucked up state of affairs in the arab world. In Beirut, once a secular country where christians, muslims, and druze lived in relative peace, the Shiites are now completely taking over in the last couple days. Hezbollah is vanquishing its enemies. Syria's hand controls everything that happens there. Very ugly scene.
In Egypt the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is fomenting violence. Iraq is awash in internecine conflict, with much probably caused by a pissing match between the three sects for control of the oil revenue.
Fatah has been in a major violent struggle with the Hamas Islamists for the last two years.
Pakistan is teetering and angry at us for propping up the dictator Mushareff. They have nukes. Looks like Iran is right there too. New advanced centrifuge.
Abu Sayef continues to slaughter in southeast asia.
In Sudan, the islamists continue to terrorize the christians.
The arab world freaks out because a dane draws a cartoon of Mohammed. Do you know how many arabic cartoons I have seen of stars of david dripping with blood? Not to mention Michael Ramirez or Conrad...
The whole arab world is fraught with war and violence. It is the norm. And people think that Israel can co-exist with these people? In a single state solution? Are you kidding me?
Israel is the straw man, the easy target and a convenient scapegoat for people who don't seem to respect human life or civilization. Can you imagine the uproar if a jew turned himself into a nail bomb and exploded himself in a mosque? Or hijacked an ocean liner? Or an airplane? Or a Maalot style massacre or an olympic massacre for that matter? The condemnation would be deafening. But it wouldn't happen. It's not in their psyche to commit such acts. But we give the Islamic radicals such intellectual carte blanche to luxuriate in their victimhood and to respond like savages. Why is this?
But explain this in Paris, or in Turin this week. Or with Cockburn and the Nation Magazine. Or to Livingston, the mayor of London. Never forget friends, its always Israel's fault. And it will probably end up in flames. Because sloppy, lazy intellectuals refuse to see what's really happening. There's a lot more arabs to appease than jews. And the jews have been the fall guys before. Like the Kurds. I'm betting it will get real ugly.
Shpilkis - Chapter XIII
"Shma Yisrael, adonai elohim adonai echad...", Irv prayed softly as he released the worn leather tefillin wrapped around his bicep. He then removed the rosh block from his forehead and sighed as he placed it in the old purple velvet bag that had held it these many years. Was it not written in the mishna?
And it shall be for a sign upon your hand, and as totafot between your eyes; for with a mighty hand did the LORD bring us forth out of Egypt" — Exodus 13:16
Irv stared grimly at the formica table situated squarely in the middle of his spartan one room apartment. This had surely been a day not like any other day. It was one thing to have to deal with the usual detective mumzer from the Police Department, maybe he forgot to fill out one of the secondhand reports, but a man from the Department of Treasury? Vay is mir. How could he be responsible for the actions of these goyim, these filth? Yes, he took a larger bite than he should have sometimes but he was an old man. Who else had been through what he had been through?
The treasury man had slowly turned the stark white pages of the binder with the photographs of the suspects, one by one. Irv had largely feigned ignorance, "I might have seen that one" but felt that the man's eyes were piercing right through him when he got to the picture of Don. Irving coughed and excused himself for a little drink of water, can an old man get a drink of water? He ran the cold water at full blast in the pawn shop's small filthy wash room, as if the sound could drown out the pressure of this temporal world and whisk him away to a place of peace. He pulled a yellowed hand towel off the shelf and after whetting it, placed it on his forehead.
After a brief moment of composure and a deep breath Irv returned to the faded midcentury couch where the government agent was still sitting. "I wish I could help you - if any of these guys walk in, is there a number I can call? The Treasury Agent stared at him intensely for a second, handed him a crisp business card and left without a word.
Irv's eyes followed the agent to his car. He flipped the light switch off and lowered the tattered aluminum blinds. That was enough excitement for one day. Surely. Had any of these people ever been through what he had been through? He peeled his right sleeve up and bared the ink stained numbers from Buchenwald.
He had been one of the famed singing horses - one of the few who had survived the camp and whose job it was to haul the large rocks around until their bodies expired. He never spoke, he never snitched - he served his death sentence with a palpable flame of hatred. He barely had the strength to walk when he was finally liberated by the kind American soldiers who were visibly stunned by his emaciated physique.
He had managed passage to New York on a lower deck berth on the White Star Line from Holland. It was on that ship where he met his eventual wife, Elise. She was a beautiful girl, a shiksa, but so very kind. He knew that they were meant for each other from the moment he laid eyes on her and they had lived a mostly great life together but now she was gone. Life had grown cold and now had little meaning. Death had stolen the only thing important to him and now he was entirely alone.
Irv had a cousin in Cleveland that he vaguely remembered, in Shaker Heights. He wouldn't bother him. He was too proud. Life was now spent mostly glued to the television, Montell to Oprah to Springer, again and again and again and now these shmutzig thieves who sold him hot watches and gold filled charms. But by god, the Treasury Department, oy, this was hot water.
Irv slumped in his metal chair and a tear welled up in his eye. Hearing the whistle of the teapot, he found his favorite russian tea, poured the boiling water into the glass mug and filled it with a little too much sugar. His small arms extruded at odd angles above his stained undershirt. He had hustled his whole life and always managed to fill that inside straight. Would it be too much to ask for another hole card? Why was he still alive when so many of the truly great ones in the camps had been killed?
Dear God, help your old buddy one more time and I will truly repent. We have been through so much together. Haven't I suffered enough already?
by rsommers
And it shall be for a sign upon your hand, and as totafot between your eyes; for with a mighty hand did the LORD bring us forth out of Egypt" — Exodus 13:16
Irv stared grimly at the formica table situated squarely in the middle of his spartan one room apartment. This had surely been a day not like any other day. It was one thing to have to deal with the usual detective mumzer from the Police Department, maybe he forgot to fill out one of the secondhand reports, but a man from the Department of Treasury? Vay is mir. How could he be responsible for the actions of these goyim, these filth? Yes, he took a larger bite than he should have sometimes but he was an old man. Who else had been through what he had been through?
The treasury man had slowly turned the stark white pages of the binder with the photographs of the suspects, one by one. Irv had largely feigned ignorance, "I might have seen that one" but felt that the man's eyes were piercing right through him when he got to the picture of Don. Irving coughed and excused himself for a little drink of water, can an old man get a drink of water? He ran the cold water at full blast in the pawn shop's small filthy wash room, as if the sound could drown out the pressure of this temporal world and whisk him away to a place of peace. He pulled a yellowed hand towel off the shelf and after whetting it, placed it on his forehead.
After a brief moment of composure and a deep breath Irv returned to the faded midcentury couch where the government agent was still sitting. "I wish I could help you - if any of these guys walk in, is there a number I can call? The Treasury Agent stared at him intensely for a second, handed him a crisp business card and left without a word.
Irv's eyes followed the agent to his car. He flipped the light switch off and lowered the tattered aluminum blinds. That was enough excitement for one day. Surely. Had any of these people ever been through what he had been through? He peeled his right sleeve up and bared the ink stained numbers from Buchenwald.
He had been one of the famed singing horses - one of the few who had survived the camp and whose job it was to haul the large rocks around until their bodies expired. He never spoke, he never snitched - he served his death sentence with a palpable flame of hatred. He barely had the strength to walk when he was finally liberated by the kind American soldiers who were visibly stunned by his emaciated physique.
He had managed passage to New York on a lower deck berth on the White Star Line from Holland. It was on that ship where he met his eventual wife, Elise. She was a beautiful girl, a shiksa, but so very kind. He knew that they were meant for each other from the moment he laid eyes on her and they had lived a mostly great life together but now she was gone. Life had grown cold and now had little meaning. Death had stolen the only thing important to him and now he was entirely alone.
Irv had a cousin in Cleveland that he vaguely remembered, in Shaker Heights. He wouldn't bother him. He was too proud. Life was now spent mostly glued to the television, Montell to Oprah to Springer, again and again and again and now these shmutzig thieves who sold him hot watches and gold filled charms. But by god, the Treasury Department, oy, this was hot water.
Irv slumped in his metal chair and a tear welled up in his eye. Hearing the whistle of the teapot, he found his favorite russian tea, poured the boiling water into the glass mug and filled it with a little too much sugar. His small arms extruded at odd angles above his stained undershirt. He had hustled his whole life and always managed to fill that inside straight. Would it be too much to ask for another hole card? Why was he still alive when so many of the truly great ones in the camps had been killed?
Dear God, help your old buddy one more time and I will truly repent. We have been through so much together. Haven't I suffered enough already?
by rsommers
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Hillary Clinton plays the nuclear race card
Here Hillary panders to the lowest low imaginable. She is truly despicable. Fan the flames of racial intolerance. Boogie down in the class swamp with the less educated Amerikans. One of the guys I had coffee with this morning told me that he could vote for Colin Powell but not the islamist candidate Obama. As in "a good black man." I guess in the final analysis, color does matter in America. It is sad. I have been impressed with Obama's campaign to date which in my opinion has been pretty much race neutral. But the attack machine has managed to do an excellent job of vilifying this man and now Hillary gets into the mud and grunts as well.
If this opportunistic, scheming swine manages to get the democratic mantle, I will sit out this election. I don't care how she's polling in the trailer parks.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Chapter XII - Collaborative Novel Project
Delorez oscillated between a dream world and reality. Was she in the stake-out car, eating crappy snack foods, or was she harassing her new partner at the drug store with her gun stuck in his back? No, that had been a fantasy, because here she was in the car with balled up candy wrappers all over her lap. The over 100 degree temperature was giving her a migraine, so besides heat waves creating mirages and motion in front of her, a left-eye dead-spot aura spread , radiating spiky circles. Wow-inducing if she hadn’t minded the pain. Maybe she should take an ice-pick and do her right eye so they’d be even.
To hell with the stake-out and that lazy ass, wherever-the-hell-he-was partner, Miss D was going home. The police radio had been quiet for over an hour. She tried use it, but just got buzzing static. Enough. Playing the one-eye game, her left eye shut against the desert glare and her right eye squinting down the highway, she reversed out of the parking lot and veered down the highway. Her right hand steered while she pressed her left thumb onto the eyebrow of the pulsating eye and tried to massage the pain. The car hit a dip and her thumb slipped. Her red-lacquered nail slipped deeply into the socket. An ice pick hadn't been needed after all. The car fish-tailed and drove off into the desert sand as she fainted against the steering wheel and accidentally activated the siren.
Lavelle, exhausted from cooking spaghetti noodles while his wife talked and the kids grabbed at his legs (and his body itched and twitched for Isabel), walked out in the desert evening to get some air. Away in the distance, he heard the wail of a police siren. Maybe Delorez was coming after all! She always did like to make a dramatic entrance.
by CR
The Neverending Novel - Chapter XI
Ginger Bryce was a halfbreed. She was half Chemehuevi Indian and half white. She never seemed to belong to either world. To the Native Americans she was a white, but to the redneck hippie crowd at Golden Shores she was an injun. Just like Corky she just didn't fit in. She left the Rez at a very young age carrying a baby. She did not know who fathered it. Could have been one of a dozen drunken misfits. Without any money and no where to go she ended up at Lavelle's Church. Lavelle never turned anyone away, he offered her a free place to stay until she delivered her baby. He also, at her request, made arrangements for Ginger to give her baby up to an adoption agency. All he asked was that she turn herself over to the Lord.
At first everything went smoothly. Ginger worked for Lavelle, mailing out invitations to his congregation, answering the phone and handling his mail. Lavelle was so trusting that he soon allowed her to pay the churches bills and deposit Sundays tithing. After awhile Lavelle noticed that his Sunday sermons' blessed donations were not making it to the bank. He also discovered in spite of being pregnant, Ginger was still using illegal drugs. Being a man of the Lord, Lavelle kept his promise to Ginger and allowed her to stay even though he knew she was stealing from the church and doing drugs. When he caught her going through his personal belongings Lavelle reluctantly told Ginger she was free to stay at the church until she delivered her child, but she would immediately have to leave after the baby was adopted. It was the longest four months of Lavelle's ministry, but the day came when Ginger gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. When the nurses asked her what name she had picked for the baby she coldly replied "I never picked a name....I don't care, I'm just giving it away anyway!" Surprisingly the baby was a healthy six pound girl with blue eyes and blondish curly hair.
Ginger missed doing drugs with her hippie friends. A few days after leaving the hospital Ginger headed to Don's trailer in Golden Shores and wasted no time to spike down some nasty street meth that was going around the commune. Only this time she didn't work for the Lord, she was about to meet him. Ginger OD'ed that night. Don borrowed Rocky's beat up 1987 F-150 and drove her to the Hospital---yes the same one where she gave birth to baby Jane only one week before, but it was too late, she was DOA. Don of course told the hospital that he picked her up hitchhiking. Although the hospital staff and Needles Police were suspicious of Don's story, they never investigated. Ginger's death meant nothing to Don other than he wasn't going to get a piece of ass from her. That's the way you get on meth-who gives a flying fuck? What Don ended up with was Gingers backpack full of junk, food stamps and one weird letter addressed to Lavelle. In it appeared to be a map of hidden gold at an old run down Needles Hotel. Within a week Corky, as usual, stole the backpack from Don, when Don was passed out on some cheap Rojo's, that Corky gave him. It was one big vicious circle, and it was just about to get bigger. Everyone in the makeshift commune thought that they were above the law and that the police had no clue of their existence. One night high on meth Corky told his family about a secret plan to find Lavelle's gold.
By kvj
Show Stopper
Overheard by yours truly at the L.A. Modernism show this weekend:
Dealer talking to customer and her daughter. " Wow, I can really see the family resemblance. Everything looks the same except your noses."
Customer: "Well, we had two different doctors."
Monday, May 5, 2008
Crash and Burn in the City of Angels
I believe in Hockey parlance it's called a doughnut. As in totally shut out. For the first time in 15 years, I failed to write a ticket at a show. The Los Angeles Modernism Show, to be more precise. This Angel's wings have been clipped and singed.
And the weird thing is, I felt it coming. I have always had a hard time working in Los Angeles. I do very well in San Diego, San Francisco, Scottsdale, Santa Fe, virtually everywhere else but can not penetrate the L.A. psyche. My last straight job was as a consultant for a Beverly Hills Co. in the early 90's and we had a mutual hatred thing going. Except for sparing Nate and Al's and a couple other spots, a part of me lies hoping that Rodin or Godzilla will return and annihilate the city one day.
I blame no one but myself for my fruitless run. The promoter, Dennis Boses, is a truly wonderful guy, who genuinely cares about his show and his dealers. Great advertising, great opening night, food, party, etc.. He and his wife Lisa are professional and pull out every stop. He gets bummed when we fail.
The problem for me is the material and angelenos themselves. I have done the show on and off for 12 years and for me it's sort of like pulling teeth without anesthetic. But Dennis is a vast improvement over the old promoter, Caskey-Lees. They were nasty, Dennis is a mensch.
I just don't believe in the stuff anymore. We are starting to see some of the material I furnished my model houses with in the 70's and 80's when I was a real estate developer. Bad torched brass wall hangings. Opaque and chrome ball lights. Not the cool 40's and 50's stuff, no, the eighth generation new derivative garbage. We are cycling through the detritus of a vapid, soulless epoch, one that had little redeeming aesthetic merit. But it is being merchandised with a straight face.
I brought a wide array of paintings and prints and some objects but as I said, they failed to spark. People of the Ikea generation seemed to gravitate more toward the visceral and immediate rather than the pedigree. Which is fine. But personally, I will go back to the 19th century before I hop on board this disco train. I am a classical person who will occasionally foray into modernism if it's great. I love Maloof, Nakashima, Naguchi and those I consider the true artists of the generation. I love the sixties as well and was buying and selling it 30 years ago. Give me acid, not this big Quaalude fest. I guess I'm a snob as well.
There was truly great material at the show and I was not alone in my quiet despair. Phenomenal pieces by Dagobert Peche, Josef Hoffman, Moser all went untouched on outstanding dealer's shelves. And the economy certainly is affecting things, I suppose. But I am having my best quarter in many years and will not accept that things have suddenly caved in. I think that it is the jaded, dastardly L.A. populous.
A friend of mine who is one of the great silver collectors in the world took me aside during the opening Friday night and whispered in my ear, " Robert, you don't know how to talk to people in Los Angeles. You can't approach them or they will run away." My open attempt to connect was apparently viewed as a threat to these super cool mavens. I gritted my teeth for the next two days and practiced my benign neglect. It worked no better than my original tact so I reverted to standard form and my eventual fruitless bounty.
I was chuckling to myself on the way home, thinking that the $4000.00 the show cost me could have been more happily spent on a week at the Grand Hyatt in Poipu, Kauai, slurping lustily on Lava Flows and making passionate love to my wife. Alas, not to be. I guess I could still get some call in the middle of the night from some potential customer who was enduring sleepless nights tormented by visions of something he or she had to have in my booth but I'm not exactly banking on it.
The goat barbecue at the mexican restaurant on Pico was a highlight as was the Tommy's chiliburger furnished by John Fillmore. I got to watch Ringo Starr on a great TV special back at the hotel. The weather was gorgeous. Celeb sighting were few, John Malkovich (who stared straight ahead and refused to make eye contact) and the guy who played Apollo Creed. There were rumours of 3 french women who were allegedly buying a ton of schlocky crap.
Some legitimate people did very, very well. Maybe my train wreck was divine retribution for some unnamed sin or larceny. But for this weekend, the shit sandwich was all mine.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
L.A. Modernism
©2008 Robert Sommers
I am taking off for the next several days in order to exhibit my wares at the Los Angeles Modernism Show in Santa Monica. There is a link to it below. Wish me luck - I don't always resonate that well with the "beautiful people". Hope to see my Angeleno friends.
Robert
Chapter X
She was shaking with the tremors only vagrant drunks know, trying to remember which key opened the safe, fearing the gun, fearing the worst. He smelled her fear, slammed her against the safe, moved the gun up and down her tight thighs, breathing heavily upon her neck, “Open the fucking safe, bitch!” She made $8.25 an hour as a cashier, how could her life be on the line for minimum wage….who will remember to turn the crock pot to low at 5pm? Which key will give him what he wants??!!!
Finally it opened, like Jesus' tomb…empty!!!! “Dear Jesus, tell Lavelle and Kiki I love them”she prayed,…Corky spun the cashier…screaming “Bitch!” “Fuck, what am I gonna do now!!”
Everyone looked past the gun into the eyes of one jonesing crack head, knowing the options were few…He threw her to the ground grabbed the cash from the registers and the guns, pushed the door open with his back, shot three times in the air and ran shaking and cursing into the alley….over the fence and into a downstairs apartment.
Fuck!!! What to do??
by lisa
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Republicans for Hitler
A congressional candidate is defending his speech to a group celebrating the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth, saying he appeared simply because he was asked.
Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.
"I'll speak before any group that invites me," Zirkle said Monday. "I've spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta."
The 2nd Congressional District includes a large portion of north central Indiana spanning from South Bend to Kokomo. It includes Pine and Jackson Townships in Porter County and parts of Washington Township, which includes the eastern edges of the Valparaiso.
It is currently served by Democrat U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly.
Porter County Republican chairman Chuck Williams on Tuesday denounced Zirkle's appearance at the gathering.
"He certainly doesn't hold the view of the of the Republican Party," Williams said. "I don't know why you would stand up in front of a picture of Adolf Hitler when millions of Americans fought against that kind of oppression."
Zirkle compared his speech to other politicians appearing at Bob Jones University.
George W. Bush, then a candidate for president, was criticized eight years ago for speaking at the South Carolina school, which teaches students that Catholicism is a cult. Also at the time of the speech, the school banned interracial dating, a policy that has since been dropped.
Zirkle said he did not know much about the neo-Nazi group and that his intention was to talk on his concern about "the targeting of young white women and for pornography and prostitution."
Zirkle will face John Frame and Joseph Roush, in addition to Puckett, in the May 6 primary.
The event was not the first time Zirkle has raised controversy on race issues. In March, Zirkle raised the idea of segregating races in separate states. Zirkle said Tuesday he's not advocating segregation, but said desegregation has been a failure.
Zirkle received 30 percent of the vote in the 2006 primary, losing to incumbent Chris Chocola, who was defeated in the general election. Zirkle said Tuesday that winning the election is not his primary goal.
"My primary purpose is to educate and inform," he said.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Murray Rosenberg R.I.P.
My stepfather, Murray, died yesterday at a hospice in Pennsylvania. Although small in stature, Murray was a great man with a giant heart who put up with my mother for many years. Born in Boston, Murray spent his life in the furniture business. He moved to the Poconos with my mother about 25 years ago.
Murray was passionate about sports, and beat a major league gambling addiction in the 60's. He went to meetings and I respected him. He put up with all the little dogs that were always underfoot in the Fisher/Rosenberg household and all the other attendant crises.
He was a loving, devoted husband to my mother and took the heat off the children whenever possible.
Death came hard and painfully and I regret my absence at the end. I hope that my mother can bear up - he was the nicest of her four husbands. Patient and extremely kind.
Raise a glass to Murray, a real mensch!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Chapter IX
As Lavelle stepped back to close the door on another day of trimming split ends from his flock's heads and hearts, a final ray of desert sun stopped him, casting a godly arc across the hair-strewn floor. And into the light stepped a miracle. A goddamn miracle.
It began with the leg of a saint, a perfect, wrap-around-your-hips-for-a-virgin-ride, cocoa brown sister of Sofia Loren's that reached into his heart and between his loins and drew forth from his diaphragm a magnificent Hallelujah Chorus - all four voices - of a moan. The leg was followed by a body that conducted Lavelle's string section along a mighty wave of pizzicato that plucked him from his soul to his sacrum.
And then he saw her face. Wondrously languid eyes, ravenous lips and a chin god surely intended to fill the empty space in every man's - and woman's - lap, all surrounded by a tawny halo of silken, slightly kinky waves that caught the lingering light and revealed her as the Madonna. His very own Virgin de Needles.
Her labial presence lifted him to the tips of his cowboy boots as he ascended a mighty, pulsing crescendo. Her lips parted. He opened his heart and every orifice he possessed to welcome the manifest manna for which he had waited all his life.
She looked into his eyes, his essence, and she purred, “Yo, Baby. Hi. You my bro', man. Er, half bro'. Who knows, maybe quarter. Was never too good at math. Anyways, pleased to meet chu, man. I'm Isabel, with an 's.' Everyone trying to stick in 'zs' these days where they don' belong. Mama was the same. …”
Lavelle's ascension had peaked, excruciatingly unfulfilled, and his various parts descended back to Earth with a thud when he fell to his knees. He took a deflated look at his Virgin as she continued her rapid-fire delivery of familial connections.
“So. Wasn' sure you knew Mama kicked.” Isabel reached out a powerful arm to pull him from the floor. “Just las' month. Pretty sure you didn' know about me, either.” She thought he was dizzied by the news and pushed him into his barber chair. “I'm the only one to stick with her, I guess. She was one crazy bitch, sure, but no one's all bad. Chu know? She wan' to love us. We got a sister out here, too, right? And I got a secret. Mama gimme it. A family secret gonna make us fat an' happy an' rich. Que rico! So, you ever hear about them ol' Harvey Girls?” She leaned against the counter, her back to the mirror.
Lavelle had no idea what she was talking about, but the veil of ecstasy was finally fully drawn back and he truly saw her for the first time. From her matte black engineer's boots and pink lace socks to the virulent magenta shorts that didn't quite cover her divinity to the halter top that barely reined in her voluptuousity, he'd gotten the sexy stuff right. She was six feet of brown beauty. But the rest of her? He knew Satan had a hand in this woman's creation. On the other hand, fat, happy and rich had some appeal. He decided to listen, warily, with his hand clutching his pocket Bible.
“So, like I says, great-great abuela, Martha, now she was cool, Mama say. Had to be good to be a Harvey Girl. Worked hard at the El Garces hotel for a year and save every peso of it. But they din' hold them customers to the same standards. One of them bastards takes her and then has the frickin nerve to pay her to shut her up. Course, she no' stupid. She take it, but she can' stay shut up forever. Come six or seventh month, they throw her out. Jus' like that. They say she a whore and tell her never come back. She set out for L.A., and five generations later, we more brown than white, kinda black in your case, bro'.”
Isabel put a booted foot on either arm of the barber chair. Lavelle began to sweat as though he'd gone for a noontime jog, and he tried mightily to keep his eyes on hers.
“So now here's the secret. Chu ready, man? This so good, it make you piss. So Mama, just before she die, she say great-great abuela, she never get to take her stash with her. It still there. It still there, man! In a secret place only we have the hint to find. From great-great abuela to her daughter to her daughter - you get it, right? It's there jus' waitin' for us.”
“What's there?” Lavelle's hand had abandoned the pocket Bible and he clasped his sister's ankles. Or half sister or whatever the hell she was. He didn't really care, because his eyes had left hers and he was on the verge of the most carnal of sins.
“Gold, bro', gold! Oro del Dios! An' it ours, man. All ours, and the sister.”
Lavelle's hands dropped as quickly as his eyes raced back to Isabel's.
“We just got to find it, bro'. Problem is, they 'bout to fix up that ol' hotel. Come March. So I go by, to check it out, right? That casa's one big stinkin' cooker of honky trash. Bad asses in every room. But we got to get in there, man, find our great-great abuela's stash. It's our destiny, bro'. We got to get it between them booting out the tweekers an' they start knocking out walls. It ours, man. Mama say. You in, man?”
By KBG
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Fallbrook Film Festival
This weekend we are having our first film festival in Fallbrook. I was one of the judges. Some of the films were great - some as you can imagine, well sucked. Last night we screened The Flyboys with one of the Baldwin brothers, as well as a host of other films. Lots of fun, multiple venues. Lots of beautiful people as well as industry people.
I am your host at the Irish pub's screening room tonight, first round is on me - seriously!
It starts at 5:30 and there is another batch at 7:30. Come on down if you are local. Buy the 10 buck ticket at the village square.
Friday, April 25, 2008
The Monty Hall Problem
Monty Hall problem
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In search of a new car, the player picks door 1. The game host then opens door 3 to reveal a goat and offers to let the player pick door 2 instead of door 1.
The Monty Hall problem is a puzzle involving probability loosely based on the American game show Let's Make a Deal. The name comes from the show's host, Monty Hall. The problem is also called the Monty Hall paradox; it is a veridical paradox in the sense that the solution is counterintuitive.
A widely known statement of the problem appeared in a letter to Marilyn vos Savant's Ask Marilyn column in Parade (vos Savant 1990):
Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
Because there is no way for the player to know which of the two unopened doors is the winning door, many people assume that each door has an equal probability and conclude that switching does not matter. In fact, in the usual interpretation of the problem the player should switch—doing so doubles the probability of winning the car from 1/3 to 2/3.
When the problem and the solution appeared in Parade, approximately 10,000 readers, including several hundred mathematics professors, wrote to the magazine claiming the published solution was wrong. Some of the controversy was because the Parade statement of the problem fails to fully specify the host's behavior and is thus technically ambiguous. However, even when given completely unambiguous problem statements, explanations, simulations, and formal mathematical proofs, many people still meet the correct answer with disbelief.
Contents
1 Problem and solution
1.1 Problem
1.2 Solution
1.3 Bayesian analysis
2 Sources of confusion
3 Aids to understanding
3.1 Why the probability is 2/3
3.2 Increasing the number of doors
3.3 Venn diagram
3.4 Combining doors
3.5 Simulation
4 Variants
4.1 Other host behaviors
4.2 Two players
4.3 Sequential doors
4.4 Quantum version
5 History of the problem
6 See also
6.1 Similar problems
7 References
8 External links
The statement of the problem in the Ask Marilyn column in Parade leaves critical aspects of the host's behavior unstated, making the problem mathematically ambiguous (Mueser and Granberg 1999). The standard analysis of the problem also assumes that the host is constrained to always open a door revealing a goat, to always make the offer to switch, and to open one of the remaining two doors randomly if the player initially picked the car (Barbeau 2000, p. 87). A mathematically explicit statement of the problem (Krauss and Wang 2003, p 10) is:
Suppose you're on a game show and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. The car and the goats were placed randomly behind the doors before the show. The rules of the game show are as follows: After you have chosen a door, the door remains closed for the time being. The game show host, Monty Hall, who knows what is behind the doors, now has to open one of the two remaining doors, and the door he opens must have a goat behind it. If both remaining doors have goats behind them, he chooses one randomly. After Monty Hall opens a door with a goat, he will ask you to decide whether you want to stay with your first choice or to switch to the last remaining door. Imagine that you chose Door 1 and the host opens Door 3, which has a goat. He then asks you "Do you want to switch to Door Number 2?" Is it to your advantage to change your choice?
The player may initially choose any of the three doors, not just Door 1, and then the host opens a different door revealing a goat and gives the player a second choice between two unopened doors.
Solution
The chance of initially choosing the car is one in three, which is the overall chance of winning the car by sticking with this choice. By contrast, the chance of initially choosing a door with a goat is two in three, and a player originally choosing a door with a goat wins by switching. In both cases the host must reveal a goat. In the 2/3 case where the player initially chooses a goat, the host must reveal the other goat making the only remaining door the one with the car.
1.
Host reveals
either goat
Player picks car
(probability 1/3) Switching results in the other goat.
2.
Host must
reveal Goat B
Player picks Goat A
(probability 1/3) Switching wins.
3.
Host must
reveal Goat A
Player picks Goat B
(probability 1/3) Switching wins.
The player has an equal chance of initially selecting the car, Goat A, or Goat B. Switching results in a win 2/3 of the time because 2/3 of the time, the player's initial pick was a goat.
As shown in the diagram above, there are three possible situations corresponding to the player's initial choice, each with probability 1/3:
The player originally picked the door hiding the car. The game host has shown one of the two goats.
The player originally picked the door hiding Goat A. The game host has shown the other goat.
The player originally picked the door hiding Goat B. The game host has shown the other goat.
If the player chooses to switch, the car will be won in either of the last two cases. A player choosing to stay with the initial choice wins in only the first case. Since in two out of three equally likely cases switching wins, the probability of winning by switching is 2/3. In other words, players who switch will win the car on average two times out of three.
The reasoning above applies to all players on average without regard to which specific door the host opens and all individual players at the start of the game, but not to a specific player at the point the player is asked whether to switch given which door the host has opened (Morgan et al 1991). This difference is subtle, but depending on the exact formulation of the problem may affect the result (see Other host behaviors, below). Determining the conditional probability of winning by switching given which door the host opens requires a different analysis.
Tree showing the probability of every possible outcome if the player initially picks Door 1
A decision tree can be used to determine both the overall probability of winning by switching and the conditional probability given which door the host opens (Grinstead and Snell 2006, p 137-138). Assuming the problem statement given above and that the player initially picks Door 1, the tree shows that switching wins in the two cases in which the player did not initially pick the car, with a total combined probability of 2/3. This is the overall probability of winning by switching. The tree also shows that there are only two possible conditions in which the host opens Door 2, and that switching loses in the 1/6 case where the car is behind Door 1 and wins in the 1/3 case where the car is behind Door 3. Similarly if the host opens Door 3, the tree shows switching loses in the 1/6 case where the car is behind Door 1 and wins in the 1/3 case where the car is behind Door 2. Switching wins twice as often as staying regardless of which door the host opens, so the conditional probability of winning by switching given either door the host opens is the same as the overall probability — both are 2/3.
Bayesian analysis
An analysis of the problem using the formalism of Bayesian probability theory (Gill 2002) makes explicit the role of the assumptions underlying the problem. In Bayesian terms, probabilities are associated to propositions, and express a degree of belief in their truth, subject to whatever background information happens to be known. For this problem the background is the set of game rules, and the propositions of interest are:
: The car is behind Door i, for i equal to 1, 2 or 3.
: The host opens Door j after the player has picked Door i, for i and j equal to 1, 2 or 3.
For example, denotes the proposition the car is behind Door 1, and denotes the proposition the host opens Door 2 after the player has picked Door 1. Indicating the background information with , the assumptions are formally stated as follows.
First, the car can be behind any door, and all doors are a priori equally likely to hide the car. In this context a priori means before the game is played, or before seeing the goat. Hence, the prior probability of a proposition is:
Second, the host will always open a door that has no car behind it, chosen from among the two not picked by the player. If two such doors are available, each one is equally likely to be opened. This rule determines the conditional probability of a proposition subject to where the car is — i.e., conditioned on a proposition Specifically, it is:
if i = j, (the host cannot open the door picked by the player)
if j = k, (the host cannot open a door with a car behind it)
if i = k, (the two doors with no car are equally likely to be opened)
if i k and j k, (there is only one door available to open)
The problem can now be solved by scoring each strategy with its associated posterior probability of winning, that is with its probability subject to the host's opening of one of the doors. Without loss of generality, assume, by re-numbering the doors if necessary, that the player picks Door 1, and that the host then opens Door 3, revealing a goat. In other words, the host makes proposition true.
The posterior probability of winning by not switching doors, subject to the game rules and , is then . Using Bayes' theorem this is expressed as:
By the assumptions stated above, the numerator of the right-hand side is:
The normalizing constant at the denominator can be evaluated by expanding it using the definitions of marginal probability and conditional probability:
Dividing the numerator by the normalizing constant yields:
Note that this is equal to the prior probability of the car's being behind the initially chosen door, meaning that the host's action has not contributed any novel information with regard to this eventuality. In fact, the following argument shows that the effect of the host's action consists entirely of redistributing the probabilities for the car's being behind either of the other two doors.
The probability of winning by switching the selection to Door 2, , can be evaluated by requiring that the posterior probabilities of all the propositions add to 1. That is:
There is no car behind Door 3, since the host opened it, so the last term must be zero. This can be proven using Bayes' theorem and the previous results:
Hence:
This shows that the winning strategy is to switch the selection to Door 2. It also makes clear that the host's showing of the goat behind Door 3 has the effect of transferring the 1/3 of winning probability a-priori associated with that door to the remaining unselected and unopened one, thus making it the most likely winning choice.
Sources of confusion
The solution would be different if the host did not know what was behind each door. Other factors, such as if the host sometimes had the option of not offering the player the chance to switch, or if the host chooses to open one of two doors concealing a goat non-randomly, may affect the player's decision, if that information were available to the player. Some statements of the problem, notably the one in Parade Magazine, do not explicitly exclude these possibilities or many other possibilities, such as there being a known pattern in the placement of the prize. For example, if the game host only offers the opportunity to switch if the contestant originally chooses the car, the probability of winning by switching is 0% — while if the host does not know what is behind the doors and has opened one randomly revealing a goat, switching and staying have the same probability. In the common understanding of the problem as stated by Krauss and Wang, the host must reveal a goat, must reveal a random goat if both unpicked doors conceal goats, and must make the offer to switch.
Once the host has opened a door, the car must be behind one of the two remaining doors. The player has no way to know which of these doors is the winning door, leading many people to assume that each door has an equal probability and to conclude that switching does not matter (Mueser and Granberg, 1999). This "equal probability" assumption, while being intuitively seductive, is incorrect. Under the conditions stated above, the player's chances of winning the car actually double by switching to the door the host offers.
Another reason the Monty Hall problem may be so counterintuitive is that the host is expected to be deceitful (Mueser and Granberg 1999). If the host offers a door only when the player has chosen correctly, then when the host offers a door the player should never opt to switch.
Another possible reason for confusion is that the problem is often stated as though the host takes the player by surprise by opening the door and offering the choice. This tends to give the impression that the host is trying to confuse a player who has chosen correctly, and would mean the player did not know the rules in advance. If the player did not know the rules, that would not alter the probability in the particular case, but it would mean that the player could not definitively make the optimal choice. This confusion is dealt with in the unambiguous statement of the problem where the host explicitly relates the rules to the contestant in advance.
Aids to understanding
Why the probability is 2/3
The most commonly voiced objection to the solution is that the past can be ignored when assessing the probability—that it is irrelevant which doors the player initially picks and the host opens. However, in the problem as originally presented, the player's initial choice does influence the host's available choices subsequently.
This difference can be demonstrated by contrasting the original problem with a variation that appeared in vos Savant's column in November 2006. In this version, Monty Hall forgets which door hides the car. He opens one of the doors at random and is relieved when a goat is revealed. Asked whether the contestant should switch, vos Savant correctly replied, "If the host is clueless, it makes no difference whether you stay or switch. If he knows, switch" (vos Savant, 2006).
In this version of the puzzle, the player has an equal chance of winning whether switching or not. There are six possible sequences of events that can occur, each with probability 1/6:
Player picks Host reveals Third door contains
Goat A Car Goat B
Goat B Car Goat A
Goat A Goat B Car
Goat B Goat A Car
Car Goat A Goat B
Car Goat B Goat A
In the first two cases above, the host reveals the car. What might happen in these cases is unknown—perhaps the contestant immediately wins or immediately loses. However, in the problem as stated, the host has revealed a goat, so only four of the six cases remain possible, and they are equally likely. In two of these four cases, switching results in a win, and in the other two, switching results in a goat. Staying with the original pick gives the same odds: a loss in two cases and a win in two others.
The player's probability of winning by switching increases to 2/3 in the problem as stated by Mueser and Granberg because in the two cases above where the host would reveal the car, he is forced to reveal the remaining goat instead. In the table below, the host's picks from the table above are highlighted. Because he cannot reveal the car, his behavior is altered in two cases:
Player picks Host reveals Third door contains
Goat A Goat B Car
Goat B Goat A Car
Goat A Goat B Car
Goat B Goat A Car
Car Goat A Goat B
Car Goat B Goat A
This change in the host's behavior causes the car to be twice as likely to be behind the "third door", and is what causes switching to be twice as likely to win in the "host knows" variation of the problem.
[edit]Increasing the number of doors
It may be easier to appreciate the solution by considering the same problem with 1,000,000 doors instead of just three (vos Savant 1990). In this case there are 999,999 doors with goats behind them and one door with a prize. The player picks a door. The game host then opens 999,998 of the other doors revealing 999,998 goats — imagine the host starting with the first door and going down a line of 1,000,000 doors, opening each one, skipping over only the player's door and one other door. The host then offers the player the chance to switch to the only other unopened door. On average, in 999,999 out of 1,000,000 times the other door will contain the prize, as 999,999 out of 1,000,000 times the player first picked a door with a goat. A rational player should switch.
[edit]Venn diagram
The factual accuracy of this section is disputed.
Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.(March 2008)
The average probability of winning the car by switching can be illustrated using Venn diagrams. After choosing Door 1, for example, the player has a 1/3 chance of having selected the door with the car, leaving a 2/3 chance between the other two doors, as shown below. Note that there is a 100% chance of finding a goat behind at least one of the two unchosen doors, because there is only one car.
The host now opens Door 3. Under the conditions of the problem statement the host is required to open one of the other two doors, and equally likely to open either unchosen door; opening this door does not affect the probability of winning the car by staying with the original choice, which remains 1/3. There is still a 2/3 probability that the car is behind either Door 2 or Door 3. However, since the car is not behind Door 3, we know that being behind one of these doors means that the car is behind Door 2; thus, that 2/3 probability is now a probability that the car is behind Door 2, as shown below. Another way to state this is that if the car is behind either door 2 or 3, by opening Door 3 the host has revealed it must be behind Door 2.
Combining doors
Instead of one door being opened and shown to be a losing door, an equivalent action is to combine the two unchosen doors into one since the player cannot, and will not, choose the opened door. The player therefore has the choice of either sticking with the original choice of door with a 1/3 chance of winning the car, or choosing the sum of the contents of the two other doors with a 2/3 chance. The game assumptions play a role here—switching is equivalent to taking the combined contents if and only if the game host is required to open a door with a goat and chooses between two losing doors randomly with equal probabilities.
In this case, what should be ignored is the opening of the door. The player actually chooses between the originally picked door and the other two—opening one is simply a distraction. There is only one car and it does not move. The original choice divides the possible locations of the car between the one door the player picks with a 1/3 chance and the other two with a 2/3 chance. It is already known that at least one of the two unpicked doors contains a goat. Revealing the goat therefore gives the player no additional information about the originally chosen door; it does not change the 2/3 probability that the car is still in the block of two doors.
Simulation
A simple way to demonstrate that a switching strategy really does win two out of three times on the average is to simulate the game with playing cards (Gardner 2001, p 243). Three cards from an ordinary deck are used to represent the three doors; one 'special' card such as the Ace of Spades should represent the door with the car, and ordinary cards, such as the two red twos, represent the goat doors.
The simulation, using the following procedure, can be repeated several times to simulate multiple rounds of the game. One card is dealt at random to the 'player', to represent the door the player picks initially. Then, looking at the remaining two cards at least one of which must be a red two, the 'host' discards a red two. If the card remaining in the host's hand is the Ace of Spades, this is recorded as a round where the player would have won by switching; if the host is holding a red two, the round is recorded as one where staying would have won.
By the law of large numbers, this experiment is likely to approximate the probability of winning, and running the experiment over enough rounds should not only verify that the player does win by switching two times out of three, but show why. Two times out of three, after one card has been dealt to the player, the Ace of Spades is in the host's hand. At that point, it is already determined whether staying or switching will win the round for the player.
If this is not convincing, the simulation can be done with the entire deck, dealing one card to the player and keeping the other 51. In this variant the Ace of Spades goes to the host 51 times out of 52, and stays with the host no matter how many non-Ace cards are discarded.
Variants
Other host behaviors
In some versions of the Monty Hall problem, the host's behavior is not fully specified. For example, the version published in Parade in 1990 did not specifically state that the host would always open another door, or always offer a choice to switch, or even never open the door revealing the car. Without specifying these rules, the player does not have enough information to conclude that switching will be successful two-thirds of the time (Mueser and Granberg, 1999). The table shows possible host behaviors and the impact on the success of switching.
Possible host behaviors in unspecified problem
Host behavior Result
The host offers the option to switch only when the player's initial choice is the winning door (Tierney 2001). Switching always yields a goat.
The host offers the option to switch only when the player has chosen incorrectly (vos Savant 1996, p. 185). Switching always wins the car.
The host does not know what lies behind the doors, and opens one at random without revealing the car (vos Savant 1996, p. 181). Switching wins the car half of the time.
The host opens a known door with probability p, unless the car is behind it (Morgan et al 1991). If the host opens his "usual" door, switching wins with probability 1/(1+p). If the host opens the other remaining door, switching wins with probability p/(1+p).
The host acts as noted in the specific version of the problem. Switching wins the car two-thirds of the time.
]Two players
In this variant, two players are each allowed to choose a different door. The game host eliminates a player who has chosen a door hiding a goat; if either player has chosen the car the other is eliminated, otherwise one of the players is eliminated at random. The host then opens the eliminated player's door, and offers the remaining player a chance to switch to the originally unchosen door. Should the remaining player switch?
The answer is no. Switching in this game leads to a win if and only if both players originally picked goats; the likelihood of this is only 1/3. By sticking with the original choice, the remaining player wins in the remaining 2/3 of the cases. So stickers will win twice as often as switchers.
There are three possible scenarios, all with probability 1/3:
Player 1 picks the door with the car. The host must eliminate player 2. Switching loses.
Player 2 picks the door with the car. The host must eliminate player 1. Switching loses.
Neither player picks the car. The host eliminates one of the players randomly. Switching wins.
Player 1 is the remaining player in the first case and half the time in the third case. Switching loses twice as often as it wins: 1/3 chance of being the remaining player and switching losing vs. 1/6 chance of remaining and switching winning. Similarly, player 2 is the remaining player in the second case and half the time in the third, and also loses twice as often by switching. Regardless of which player remains, this player has a 2/3 probability of winning with the sticking strategy.
The two player game, from the final player's point of view, resembles the single player game: the player chooses a door, a goat is revealed behind another door, and the player is given the opportunity to switch. However, the significant difference is that one player is eliminated. The process of surviving the elimination improves the remaining player's chances of having chosen the car from 1/3 to 2/3. Another way to look at this is that the chances of the remaining player having not chosen the car initially is a combined probability: it is the chance of not choosing the car initially and not being the eliminated player: (2/3)x(1/2) =1/3. The only other scenario for the remaining player is choosing the car and since the two possible outcomes must have a probability of 1 the probability of having the car is now 2/3.
The two player game is exactly the same as the one player game, except in reverse. In the one player game, it is the player's chosen door that is guaranteed not to be opened, and which therefore retains the original probability of 1/3. In the two person game, it is the unchosen door that is guaranteed not to be opened, and which therefore retains the original probability. If there were a three person game, in which one of the goat doors is randomly chosen, then no door can be categorized as guaranteed not to be opened, and therefore none of them retain the original probability of 1/3. In such a game, there is a true symmetry between the doors, and there would be no benefit to either switching or not switching.
Sequential doors
There is a generalization of the original problem to n doors. In the first step, the player chooses a door. The game host then opens some other door that is a loser. If desired, the player may then switch to another door. The game host then opens another as-yet-unopened losing door, different from the player's current choice. Then the player may switch again, and so on. This continues until there are only two unopened doors left: the player's current choice and another one. How many times should the player switch, and when, if at all?
One possible strategy is to stick with the first choice all the way through but then switch at the very end. With four doors, this strategy can be proven optimal; it has been asserted that with n doors, this strategy is also optimal and gives a probability of winning equal to (n-1)/n (Bapeswara Rao and Rao 1992).
This problem appears similar to the television show Deal or No Deal, which typically begins with 26 boxes. The player selects one to keep, and then randomly picks boxes to open from amongst the rest. In this game, even until the end, the box the player initially selects and all boxes left unrevealed are equally likely to be the winner. The distinction is that any box the player picks to open might reveal the grand prize, thereby eliminating it from contention. Monty on the other hand, knows the contents and is forbidden from revealing the winner. Because the Deal or No Deal player is just as likely to open the winning box as a losing one, the Monty Hall advantage is lost. Assuming the grand prize is still left with two boxes remaining, the player has a 50/50 chance that the initially selected box contains the grand prize.
[edit]Quantum version
A quantum version of the paradox illustrates some points about the relation between classical or non-quantum information and quantum information, as encoded in the states of quantum mechanical systems. The formulation is loosely based on Quantum game theory. The three doors are replaced by a quantum system allowing three alternatives; opening a door and looking behind it is translated as making a particular measurement. The rules can be stated in this language, and once again the choice for the player is to stick with the initial choice, or change to another "orthogonal" option. The latter strategy turns out to double the chances, just as in the classical case. However, if the show host has not randomized the position of the prize in a fully quantum mechanical way, the player can do even better, and can sometimes even win the prize with certainty (D'Ariano et al 2002).
History of the problem
An essentially identical problem appeared as the Three Prisoners Problem in Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games column in Scientific American in 1959 (Gardner 1959). Gardner's version makes the selection procedure explicit, avoiding the unstated assumptions in the Parade version. This puzzle in probability theory involves three prisoners, a random one of whom has been secretly chosen to be executed in the morning. The first prisoner begs the guard to tell him which of the other two will go free, arguing that this reveals no information about whether the prisoner will be the victim; the guard responds by claiming that if the prisoner knows that a specific one of the other two prisoners will go free it will raise the first prisoner's subjective chance of being executed from 1/3 to 1/2. The question is whether the analysis of the prisoner or the guard is correct. In the version given by Martin Gardner, the guard then performs a particular randomizing procedure for selecting which name to give the prisoner; this gives the equivalent of the Monty Hall problem without the usual ambiguities in its presentation.
In 1975, Steve Selvin wrote a pair of letters to the American Statistician (Selvin 1975a, Selvin 1975b) regarding the Monty Hall problem. The first presented the problem in a version close to its most popular form; the version presented in Parade 15 years later is a restatement of Selvin's version. The second letter appears to be the first use of the term "Monty Hall problem". The problem is actually an extrapolation from the game show. Monty Hall did open a wrong door to build excitement, but offered a known lesser prize—such as $100 cash—rather than a choice to switch doors. As Monty Hall wrote to Selvin (Hall 1975):
And if you ever get on my show, the rules hold fast for you—no trading boxes after the selection.
Phillip Martin's article in a 1989 issue of Bridge Today magazine titled "The Monty Hall Trap" (Martin 1989) presented Selvin's problem, with the correct solution, as an example of how one can fall into the trap of treating non-random information as if it were random. Martin then gives examples in the game of bridge where players commonly miscalculate the odds by falling into the same trap, such as the Principle of Restricted Choice. Given the controversy that would arise over this problem a year later, Martin showed a lack of prescience when he stated, "Here [in the Monty Hall problem] the trap is easy to spot. But the trap can crop up more subtly in a bridge setting."
A restated version of Selvin's problem statement appeared in Marilyn vos Savant's Ask Marilyn question-and-answer column of Parade in September 1990 (vos Savant 1990). Though vos Savant gave the correct answer that switching would win two-thirds of the time, vos Savant estimates 10,000 readers including several hundred mathematics professors wrote in to declare that her solution was wrong. As a result of the publicity the problem earned the alternative name Marilyn and the Goats.
In November 1990, an equally contentious discussion of vos Savant's article took place in Cecil Adams's column The Straight Dope (Adams 1990). Adams initially answered, incorrectly, that the chances for the two remaining doors must each be one in two. After a reader wrote in to correct the mathematics of Adams' analysis, Adams agreed that mathematically, he had been wrong, but said that the Parade version left critical constraints unstated, and without those constraints, the chances of winning by switching were not necessarily 2/3. Numerous readers, however, wrote in to claim that Adams had been "right the first time" and that the correct chances were one in two.
The Parade column and its response received considerable attention in the press, including a front page story in the New York Times (Tierney 1991) in which Monty Hall himself was interviewed. He appeared to understand the problem quite well, giving the reporter a demo with car keys and explaining how actual game play on Let's Make a Deal differed from the rules of the puzzle.
Over 40 papers have been published about this problem in academic journals and the popular press (Mueser & Granberg 1999).
The problem continues to resurface outside of academia. The syndicated NPR program Car Talk featured it as one of their weekly "Puzzlers," and the answer they featured was quite clearly explained as the correct one (Magliozzi & Magliozzi, 1998). An account of mathematician Paul Erdos's first encounter of the problem can be found in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers—like many others, he initially got it wrong. The problem is discussed, from the perspective of a boy with Asperger syndrome, in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a 2003 novel by Mark Haddon. The problem is also addressed in a lecture by the character Charlie Eppes in an episode of the CBS drama NUMB3RS (Episode 1.13) and in Derren Brown's 2006 book Tricks Of The Mind. The Monty Hall problem (though it was called "the game show host problem" in the film) appears in the film 21, in which the main character, Ben, correctly answers the question in his MIT college math course. Economist M. Keith Chen identified a potential flaw in hundreds of experiments related to cognitive dissonance that use an analysis with issues similar to those involved in the Monty Hall problem (Tierney 2008).
[edit]See also
Similar problems
Bertrand's box paradox (also known as the Three cards problem)
Boy or Girl
Three Prisoners Problem
Two envelopes problem
References
Adams, Cecil (1990)."On 'Let's Make a Deal,' you pick Door #1. Monty opens Door #2—no prize. Do you stay with Door #1 or switch to #3?", The Straight Dope, (November 2, 1990). Retrieved July 25, 2005.
Bapeswara Rao, V. V. and Rao, M. Bhaskara (1992). "A three-door game show and some of its variants". The Mathematical Scientist 17, no. 2, pp. 89–94
Barbeau, Edward (2000). Mathematical Fallacies, Flaws and Flimflam. The Mathematical Association of America. ISBN 0-8838-5529-1.
Bohl, Alan H.; Liberatore, Matthew J.; and Nydick, Robert L. (1995). "A Tale of Two Goats … and a Car, or The Importance of Assumptions in Problem Solutions". Journal of Recreational Mathematics 1995, pp. 1–9.
D'Ariano, G.M et al (2002). "The Quantum Monty Hall Problem" (PDF). Los Alamos National Laboratory, (February 21, 2002). Retrieved January 15, 2007.
Gardner, Martin (1959). "Mathematical Games" column, Scientific American, October 1959, pp. 180–182. Reprinted in The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions.
Gardner, Martin (2001). A Gardner's Workout: Training the Mind and Entertaining the Spirit. A K Peters, Ltd.. ISBN 1-5688-1120-9.
Gill, Jeff (2002). Bayesian Methods, pp. 8–10. CRC Press. ISBN 1-5848-8288-3.
Grinstead, Charles M. and Snell, J. Laurie (2006-07-04). Grinstead and Snell’s Introduction to Probability (PDF), Online version of Introduction to Probability, 2nd edition, published by the American Mathematical Society, Copyright (C) 2003 Charles M. Grinstead and J. Laurie Snell.. Retrieved on 2008-04-02.
Hall, Monty (1975). The Monty Hall Problem. LetsMakeADeal.com. Includes May 12, 1975 letter to Steve Selvin. Retrieved January 15, 2007.
Krauss, Stefan and Wang, X. T. (2003). "The Psychology of the Monty Hall Problem: Discovering Psychological Mechanisms for Solving a Tenacious Brain Teaser," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 132(1). Retrieved from http://www.usd.edu/~xtwang/Papers/MontyHallPaper.pdf March 30, 2008.
Magliozzi, Tom; Magliozzi, Ray (1998). Haircut in Horse Town: & Other Great Car Talk Puzzlers. Diane Pub Co.. ISBN 0-7567-6423-8.
Martin, Phillip (1989). "The Monty Hall Trap", Bridge Today, May–June 1989. Reprinted in Granovetter, Pamela and Matthew, ed. (1993), For Experts Only, Granovetter Books.
Morgan, J. P., Chaganty, N. R., Dahiya, R. C., & Doviak, M. J. (1991). "Let's make a deal: The player's dilemma," American Statistician 45, pp. 284-287.
Mueser, Peter R. and Granberg, Donald (May 1999). "The Monty Hall Dilemma Revisited: Understanding the Interaction of Problem Definition and Decision Making", University of Missouri Working Paper 99-06. Retrieved July 5, 2005.
Nahin, Paul J. (2000). Duelling idiots and other probability puzzlers. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, pp. 192–193. ISBN 0-691-00979-1.
Selvin, Steve (1975a). "A problem in probability" (letter to the editor). American Statistician 29(1):67 (February 1975).
Selvin, Steve (1975b). "On the Monty Hall problem" (letter to the editor). American Statistician 29(3):134 (August 1975).
Tierney, John (2001). "Behind Monty Hall's Doors: Puzzle, Debate and Answer?", The New York Times, 1991-07-21. Retrieved on 2008-01-18.
Tierney, John (2008). "And Behind Door No. 1, a Fatal Flaw", The New York Times, 2008-04-08. Retrieved on 2008-04-08.
vos Savant, Marilyn (1990). "Ask Marilyn" column, Parade Magazine p. 16 (9 September 1990).
vos Savant, Marilyn (1996). The Power of Logical Thinking. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-612-30463-3.
vos Savant, Marilyn (2006). "Ask Marilyn" column, Parade Magazine p. 6 (26 November 2006)
vos Savant, Marilyn (2007). Game Show Problem. Retrieved on 2008-04-06.
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Further reading & explanations
Eric W. Weisstein, Monty Hall Problem at MathWorld.
The Monty Hall Problem at letsmakeadeal.com (quotes Monty's letter to Steve Selvin in full)
Graphical Proof of the Monty Hall Problem–tea cups and diamonds
Monty Hall Dilemma at cut-the-knot
Grand Illusions–explanation and various simulators
Secret of Monty Hall–explanation from the bad-door side
Monty Hall Problem: Tree Diagram – a tree-diagram of the Monty Hall problem under the Marilyn vos Savant assumptions
The Monty Hall Problem Web Page–a simple presentation of the problem and its solution
The Game Show Problem–the original question and responses on Marilyn's web site
How to Name a Goat: Simplifying the Monty Hall Problem
"Monty Hall Paradox" by Matthew R. McDougal, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project.
Simulations
A Monty Hall Simulator in Javascript –a JavaScript web browser-based simulator
Realtime global simulation–a simulation which tallies up the results from every user who has ever played
The Monty Hall Problem - A game simulation–illustration by a demonstrative, user-friendly and versatile game simulation
Monty Hall Simulator–simulators for the keep and change strategy in Perl, with data files representing the results of playing the game one million times with each strategy
Monty Hall Simulator–Python script that can run the problem any number of times and tallies results for each strategy.
"Monty Hall Problem" by Fiona Maclachlan, The Wolfram Demonstrations Project.
The Monty Hall Problem at The New York Times.
Bibliographies
Monty Hall Paradox (let's make a deal)–lengthy bibliography
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