User:Sunray/Discussion of Monty Hall RfC

The purpose of this page is to develop an RfC for issues related to the Monty Hall problem. Discussion here will be between Rick Block, Martin Hogbin and me. The agreed upon steps are as follows:

1. Martin and Rick agree on an RfC statement, or statements.
2. They then agree on a decision rule
3. The RfC is then posted and opened to comment from all autoreviewed editors.

My suggested outline for discussion is below. You are welcome to suggest additions or changes. Once that is done, would each of you be willing to begin by preparing a draft of what you would like to see in an opening statement? Sunray (talk) 17:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I actually have a suggestion for how we might be able to create a single statement - I'll describe this below. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Preparing an opening statement

Rick's draft

I think the statement should have the following basic structure, with the content of each section (essentially line by line) either agreed or prefaced with something like "Rick says" or "Martin says" as appropriate. Essentially this boils down to treating the RfC statement in the same way we'd treat an article where there are differing POVs. The "Rick says" or "Martin says" preface attributes what one of us is saying to whoever is saying it, which doesn't mean whatever is said is true but simply that it is what one of us is saying. In the content below I've used a "Rick says" preface for some content and included "Rick says ..." and "Martin says ..." as placeholders (mostly to show how it sort of might end up reading). In the final version, ideally there would be none of these - but realistically I suspect there will be at least a few. This is not a complete draft of "my" statement, just something to show the form I'm suggesting.

Brief summary of the MHP

The MHP may be the most counterintuitive probability puzzle ever devised.

Rick says the standard version creates a mental image of a player who has picked Door 1 deciding whether to take the host's offer to switch to Door 2, after the host has opened Door 3. It's exquisitely counterintuitive - you don't know which of only two places the car may be, but the probability is not evenly divided between them.

Martin says ...

Overall summary of the literature

There is a vast literature about this problem (thousands of sources), including a huge number of popular sources which nearly universally present what we'll call "simple" solutions and a smaller but also huge number of academic sources from a variety of fields which present different types of solutions to the standard problem and numerous variants, analyze why the problem is so counterintuitive, etc.

Summary of academic sources from the field of probability

Rick says ... (this content will be controversial so I'm omitting it for now)

Martin says ...

OK, so what's the fuss?

Martin is suggesting a change to the article's structure. Rick objects to this change and suggests a different structure. The two structures are inherently incompatible.

What structure is Martin suggesting?

Martin says ...

Rick says he understands Martin to be saying ...

What are Martin's reasons for suggesting this structure

Martin says ...

What are Rick's objections to this proposal?

Rick says ...

What structure is Rick suggesting?

Rick says he favors a single solution section including both "simple" and conditional solutions ("simple" solutions first) in a strictly NPOV manner using text like the following:

Different sources present solutions to the problem using a variety of approaches.

Some sources (naming them) present this solution. <solution 1 goes here>

Some sources (naming them) present this solution. <solution 2 goes here>

Some sources (naming them) present this solution. <solution 3 goes here>

Rick has written a full text draft of such a section, see [1]. [I'd be happy to move this to a new page if the surrounding context on the talk page might be distracting]

Martin says he understands Rick to be saying ...

What are Rick's reasons for suggesting this structure?

Rick says the intent of the structure he is proposing is to present the two kinds of solutions typically presented in popular and academic probability sources in an editorially neutral fashion - without favoring one or the other. Rick agrees with Martin that the explicit criticism of the "simple" solutions can come in a later section of the article, but disagrees that presenting a conditional solution is overcomplicated or constitutes an implied criticism of "simple" solutions.

What are Martin's objections to this structure?

Martin says ...

Summing up the conflicting positions

Martin says ...

Rick says ...'

Determining the decision rule

The parameters for determining the outcome. What constitutes consensus?

Process

Posting of RfC, duration of process, etc.