I think this might hit nail on the head with regards to issues people have with monty hall problem (and its variations).
Too bad monty hall problem is too well known. Otherwise we could do tests on people of different native languages and see if perhaps the language confuses the hell out of people who weren’t taught to think of the probabilities in language independent way. We say—chances of X , like we say, colour of X, but the chances are not property of X in the same way that the colour is. We say ‘distance to’ something, not ‘distance of’ something. Maybe we should say, chances to outcome. Chances from our knowledge, to outcome.
Indeed. But there’s important difference—the X has some physical property that becomes one colour or another, while that’s not so for probability. There’s also not a great deal of important confusion here.
I think this might hit nail on the head with regards to issues people have with monty hall problem (and its variations).
Too bad monty hall problem is too well known. Otherwise we could do tests on people of different native languages and see if perhaps the language confuses the hell out of people who weren’t taught to think of the probabilities in language independent way. We say—chances of X , like we say, colour of X, but the chances are not property of X in the same way that the colour is. We say ‘distance to’ something, not ‘distance of’ something. Maybe we should say, chances to outcome. Chances from our knowledge, to outcome.
It’s a bit of an approximation to speak of “the colour of X” too, and in roughly the same way as it is to speak of “the probability of X”.
Indeed. But there’s important difference—the X has some physical property that becomes one colour or another, while that’s not so for probability. There’s also not a great deal of important confusion here.