The first part, the abstract part, was a joy to read. But the Monty Hall part started getting weaker, and the Two Aces part I didn’t bother reading at all. What I’d have done differently if your awesome idea for a post came to me first: remove the jarring false tangent in Monty Hall, make all diagrams identical in style to the ones in the first part (colors, shapes, fonts, lack of borders), never mix percentages and fractions in the same diagram, use cancer screening as your first motivating example, Monty Hall as the second example, Two Aces as an exercise for the readers—it’s essentially a variant of Monty Hall.
Also, indicate more clearly in the Monty Hall problem statement that whenever the host can open two doors, it chooses each of them with probability 50%, rather than (say) always opening the lower-numbered one. Without this assumption the answer could be different.
Sorry for the criticisms. It’s just my envy and frustration talking. Your post had the potential to be so completely awesome, way better than Eliezer’s explanation, but the tiny details broke it.
2nd’d. Here I would like to encourage you (=komponisto) to do a non-minor edit (although those are seldom here), to give the post the polish it deserves.
Sigh. Of course I upvoted this, but...
The first part, the abstract part, was a joy to read. But the Monty Hall part started getting weaker, and the Two Aces part I didn’t bother reading at all. What I’d have done differently if your awesome idea for a post came to me first: remove the jarring false tangent in Monty Hall, make all diagrams identical in style to the ones in the first part (colors, shapes, fonts, lack of borders), never mix percentages and fractions in the same diagram, use cancer screening as your first motivating example, Monty Hall as the second example, Two Aces as an exercise for the readers—it’s essentially a variant of Monty Hall.
Also, indicate more clearly in the Monty Hall problem statement that whenever the host can open two doors, it chooses each of them with probability 50%, rather than (say) always opening the lower-numbered one. Without this assumption the answer could be different.
Sorry for the criticisms. It’s just my envy and frustration talking. Your post had the potential to be so completely awesome, way better than Eliezer’s explanation, but the tiny details broke it.
this does seem like the type of article that should be a community effort.. perhaps a wiki entry?
2nd’d. Here I would like to encourage you (=komponisto) to do a non-minor edit (although those are seldom here), to give the post the polish it deserves.