Well I guess I'll start this one. Thought this episode was pretty good (and yay, it's actually new!) The Pick a Door myth: Still trying to wrap my mind around this one. The fact everybody stuck with their first choice wasn't a surprise (after all, people naturally don't want to look indecisive or unsure in front of others-- especially on TV or in front of the Mythbusters), but the fact your odds go up considerably when you switch doors is just mindboggling to me. Regardless of how Jaime broke it down at the end, it still seems like it should be a 50/50 shot once that third door is out. Grenade Shrapnel: As usual, I think they took this a bit too literally. No one expects you'd escape harm completely if you dove to the ground, just that it would be a bit safer than the alternative. Which is what the test proved. Flaming Tire: Think they were a bit too quick to dismiss this one. Yeah the lighter fluid doesn't keep the tire inflated, but the hard part is seating the tire to the rim. Once that's done, then you can easily fill it with air (or use some fix-a-flat if you're out in the middle of nowhere). Firearm Fashion: For being such a simple myth to test, this one was surprisingly fun as hell to watch. I was laughing my ass off watching the guys test out the various movie stances, and seeing the absolutely ridiculous results (although to be fair, I imagine your accuracy would improve if you took more time to practice with them).
I thought it was a great episode. The only myth that wasn't very surprising was the action movie firearm one, although I suspect, that's something you can get a lot better at if you train it for some time instead of when you do it the first time like Jaime and Adam (still no way it's better than the standard way of shooting a pistol, but still). The Monty Hall paradox is mindblowing because it's so incredibly counter-intuitive, but when you simply do the math without any emotion behind it, it does make sense.
The "Monty Hall Paradox" still doesn't make much sense to me. Jamie Parses it down at the end that after the first "unknown" door is removed that the remaining "unknown door" has a 2/3 chance of being the right one. Seems to me it has just as much chance of being the wrong one too. But obviously their "test results" showed that changing your choice has a clear statistical advantage. I could make the, small, argument when Jamie says they used a computerized "random number generator" to determine how to arrange the door during the blind live test that computers are incapable of truly generating a "random number." I think rolling a die (six-sided die, with 4, 5 and 6 also representing a 1, 2 and 3, respectively), spinning a wheel like what you get in cheesy board games or something like that probably would have been a bit more "random." A large sample size than 20 "contestants" probably would have gotten more people who'd opt to change their choice. There was also nothing and stake. There was no incentive for the "contestant" to change their choice as there was nothing to be gained or lost by opening the right or wrong door. In TV game shows there is, namely whatever the prize is. Their "mini test" they did with the two of them was probably a bit better in this regard of a)being somewhat random (how the interns placed the numbers on the sheet) and b) testing both the "chage doors"/"don't change doors" parts of the "myth." Interesting results but the math or explanation still doesn't make sense to me and it truly seems like it's a paradox. If their speculation was correct in that it was 1/3 vs 2/3 thing I'd think their data would have reflected that. (Adam would have won twice as much as Jamie did, instead Adam's wins far out-stripped Jamie's.) The tire myth was interesting but I knew there was no way it would also "inflate" the tire to pressure and hold it there. Because the mini-explosion wasn't doing anything to put air into the tire beyond whatever air was already there. Once the expanded gases from the ignited fuel cooled and condensed that's all that would be there, the normal air pressure from the atmosphere plus some of the now condensed fuel. The gun myths were just fun to watch and it's no surprise the various Hollywood styles didn't work compared to the traditional method, except for of-course, the one-handed at site-level method. I suspect, however, an experienced shooter could shoot from the hip, "gangsta style" or with multiple guns with better accuracy. Doing it for the first time is hardly going to get the best results. Hell, I'm sure there's entire gun competitions built around shooting from the hip. I thought the same thing as the OP on the grenade myth. I'm not sure the "myth" as intended was to say someone would escape harm completely but would minimize their harm which, obviously, they would. And if someone was in some sort of armor or other military wear the small bit of shrapnel that did breach the "prone zone" probably would have little effect. Using buster, ballistics gel or something like both "naked" and in armor would have probably shown more results as far as survivability.
Hip-shooting is useless at any distance beyond arm's length - at which point you may as well bring the sights up to eye level and shoot the right way. The one time hip-shooting is actually taught as practical is when you're physically scuffling with the bad guy. The proper method is to draw your firearm with your strongside hand, PUSH the bad guy away with your weak arm, HOLD that arm up to keep them away, then bring your gun up to your hip (actually a little higher, like rib-level), and shoot for center-of-mass.
You used to see hip-shooting so often in westerns, I wonder if that's really how they did it back then. Maybe the thinking was that holding it against your hip gives you more stability or something. Kinda strange that the weaver stance is such a modern invention. Seems like such a no-brainer that it would have been using it from the very beginning.
It's really simple: Your odds never change if you stick with the same door. IF (note that's a big IF) you know a third, empty door is going to be revealed, there's only two options. Well, even if you are personally ignorant of the fact but it's still part of the game, there's only two options. Your first choice and option is always going to be a 1-in-3 chance with one door, and the remaining option is a 2-in-3 chance since it consists of the two doors you didn't choose. Once you make your decision, those odds are locked in place. Opening an empty door doesn't change them. You still have a 1-in-3 chance of having picked the winning door, and the remaining two doors (even though one is opened) still has a 2-in-3 chance. Just because you now know what's behind one of the two remaining doors doesn't change that whatsoever. So if you switch, your odds double even though it seems like you only have a 50-50 shot at that time. However, it would only be 50-50 if those were there were only two doors. But there's still three, even though you know one's empty. It's always going to be a 1-in-3 and 2-in-3 choice; two choices, but different odds.' Or, basically, it's only 50-50 if one of the doors is revealed before you make your choices.
Wyatt Earp (or was it Wild Bill?) said he won every gun fight because he drew his gun, took careful aim, and shot the other guy quickly but accurately.
Well yeah, that's pretty much how Jaime explained it. But that still doesn't explain why those odds become locked in place. The prize should be JUST as likely to be under the door the contestant picked as the one left over, it would seem to me. And yet somehow the contestant hardly ever picks the right door? How is that??
I remember Gene Hackman's character in Unforgiven saying that, but maybe the writers stole that line from one of the two guys you mentioned (or maybe it was common anyway).
The thing you have to wrap your head around is that you are only ever given two choices, but those two choices never have 50-50 odds. When offered a door, you're given Choice A [the door you pick] and Choice B [the other two doors]. Since there are three doors, and each door has a 1-in-3 chance of hiding the prize, that means Choice A has only a 33% chance of being the winning door and Choice B has a 66% chance of having the prize. Let me say that again. Choice A has a 33% chance of winning and Choice B has a 66% chance of winning. Now Monty opens one of the doors from Choice B. This is where the confusion/paradox comes into play. Monty knew from the beginning that this door had no chance of having the prize, so revealing its contents has no actual impact on the randomness of the choices. He's creating an illusion of a 50-50 chance, but Choice A always had a 33% chance of being the winner and Choice B always had/has a 66% chance of being the winner. It was still one door versus two doors. 33% versus 66%. So when you're giving the option to switch your Choice, that's where the illusion of a 50-50 chance comes into play. But just because one door was eliminated after the fact -- and because Monty knew it wasn't a winning choice -- the actual odds never changed. You're still choosing from (one door) versus (two doors). If you decide to stay with your Choice A, you have a 33% chance of winning. And if you decide to switch to Choice B, you have a 66% chance of winning. The fact that one of the doors in Choce B was revealed doesn't change a thing. You still only have two choices to choose from. At no point is it ever a 50%-50% choice. That's just the illusion created by your initial selection of one door versus two doors. The contestant simply only has a 1-in-3 chance of guessing right the first time, but when given the choice to switch it jumps up to 2-in-3 even though one of the doors has been revealed. He simply had a 2-in-3 chance of choosing wrong to begin with; eliminating the third door just makes it so the remaining door gets the full 2-in-3 chance rather than the 1-in-3 it, too, originally had.
Santeria, that's a great explanation of the Monty Hall Paradox. I got a pretty good sense of it from the show and just from my own rusty knowledge of statistics, but you really helped clarify it. What's sad is that nobody in their sample changed their vote or even considered the statistics, instead just going with "gut instinct," which is meaningless in a random choice with no data to base it on. It's a sad illustration of how little understanding the American public has of probability and statistics, and how easy it therefore is to mislead and manipulate them. That's a good counterargument. It would be worth retesting to see if there was a difference with a genuine incentive in play. Although one could argue that even with no material gain, there's a psychological reward to getting the right answer, or to getting applauded when you win a game even if you don't really gain anything. I mean, if you're playing Monopoly or Scrabble or tic-tac-toe, you don't achieve any material or practical gain by winning, but there's still a greater emotional reward to success than to failure. So that would provide an incentive on some level. But in the first part with the audience, they weren't testing the statistics, they were testing the psychological portion of the myth, the assertion that contestants were unlikely to switch. They didn't actually get any useful statistical data, as Jamie said, since nobody chose to switch. The shop rig was testing a wholly different part of the myth, so there's no "better" or "worse" there. Maybe they could get better results that Adam and Jamie did, but would they get better results by shooting from the hip or with sideways guns than they would with the Weaver or straightarm stance? That's the key question -- not whether these methods can hit the target at all, but whether there's any particular advantage to using them instead of a more conventional stance. At best it would be more of a trick-shot thing, a way to show off, than a standard, optimal tactic. Which might be fine if you're in a shooting competition, but if you're fighting for your life, then if you have any sense and training at all you'd say "screw the trick shots" and stick with the reliable, basic stances. I don't know about that. It's not like shrapnel damage is cumulative. Basically each piece of shrapnel is a small bullet, and it only takes one in the right place to kill you. Your odds might be marginally better if you duck and cover, but that hardly makes it a safe zone. I'd say that if you had no time to run to a safer distance, the best option would be to lie on your belly facing away from the grenade, so that the shrapnel would be more likely to hit you in the legs than a vital area. Then again, if it hit your femoral artery, you'd be dead in moments. A good point. If you have a helmet and flak jacket, then diving onto your belly facing the grenade might help. But I don't think that's strictly what the myth was about. The question asked specifically about the shrapnel pattern, so that was the variable they tested independently of other considerations. Oh, that explains it. Given how badly it worked, I was wondering why it would even have been used in the movies at all. It does make sense for a close-range thing, like if you're going to clandestinely pull a gun on someone and force them to go with you, or just shoot them in the gut by surprise. So that makes sense in the context of '40s noir or gangster movies. It's a more intimate kind of threat, not something intended for ranged combat. I wonder if the sideways grip was originally a short-range thing too. When I think about it, I get a mental image of someone holding a gun sideways with the barrel right up against a person's head, threatening them. It might even make it easier to look someone in the eye while holding the gun against their temple or something, because you wouldn't have to twist your wrist as much as you would if you were holding the gun upright in that position. So it might be an effective move for up-close threat and intimidation, for criminals who wanted to cow and terrify their victims by literally putting a gun to their head. As with the hip shot, maybe it's meant for point-blank range and fails when attempted at a distance.
I think Dad used a hip-shot once, when he turned around on a beach on Ie Shima in '45 and saw a Japanese officer about to cleave him in twain with a sword. Pretty sure Dad said the guy was too close to do anything more than shoot his .45 from the hip. And shoot, and shoot, and shoot... Conversely, he warned me away from hip-shooting based on the time he tried to hip-shoot a fox that was running away from the chicken coop, and fired a whole clip without hitting anything but grass and trees. Wasting anything like that was anathema to someone who grew up in the depression.