The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time; Journal #2

The Monty Hall Problem
Christopher especially likes this math problem, and even shows the whole problem and solution in the book. He likes it because it proves that intuition, which is what people use to make decisions in life, can sometimes be wrong and logic is right. Christopher doesn't have intuition because he has Asperger's disease and he can't understand things like most people, so he uses logic to work things out. Intuition can be much more useful in most cases, but since logic is just straightforward and right, it is the only thing Christopher uses to sort out his problems and make decisions in his life. In the Monty Hall Problem, you are on a gameshow and you choose one of three closed doors, and after you choose it, the gameshow host opens a different door to reveal a goat, and asks if you want to change your door; one door has a car behind it and the other two have goats behind it. The object is to win the car. Marilyn vos Savant said that you should choose any door, and then when asked to change, you always should. Most mathematicians said that this is wrong, but they were using your intuition, which means you would have a 50/50 chance of getting the car. But in this case, intuition is not right. If you change your answer and pick the other door, you have a 2-3 chance of getting the car. Christopher likes this problem because it is complicating and tricky, but straightforward in the end if you use logic. He also likes it because people told him that math was simple, and that's why he likes it, but this problem also shows that math is not simple, it is very complicated and takes a very smart person to understand it and do it.