Madness of Fluxions

How to make people crazy with probability.

There’re a bunch of probability puzzles that seem to drive people crazy even today. Beyond the classic Monty Hall problem, there’s the puzzle about picking between two envelopes, where one has twice the amount of money as the other. The second of those problems gave rise to over 300 debating comments in its recent appearance in the Volokh Conspiracy. It is also broken down here.

If you ever want to really bust up a party full of people who are intelligent and aggressive, but don’t know probability, try that one. It’s guaranteed to turn a group of otherwise normal people into snarling math-maniacs.