The simplest question with the most difficult answer

(I wrote this post previously. However, the blogger gods seemed to be against me and decided that my session had timed out. So if this seems sub-par, accept my apologies.)

In the past, I have written about trying to come up with the perfect system to make the decision of whether to accept the Banker's offer in Deal or No Deal. You might have noticed that I haven't really followed up on it. Well I had worked on something, but ran into two problems:

(a) I was working under the assumption that I could apply the Monty Hall problem, however I should have realized that it was actually an invalid comparison
(b) Deciding on the formula for choosing a deal or not is very dependent on a player's personal goal.

It's the second problem that J. Kelly Nestruck addresses in his article in the National Post on Tuesday. He followed it up with a blog post which covered the odds of somebody actually winning the $1 Million.

Good fun stuff to read, and leaves things open for somebody to possibly find a better answer.