I used to watch with my wife, until I saw one idiot of a contestant - a coach for a high school team, make every wrong decision possible. It was clear he had no idea of the notion of expected value - I don’t think he even knew how to divide. He got thoroughly screwed, and he deserved it.
I’m sure they lowball the early offers to force people to keep on playing. Then it becomes a simple matter of computing the expected value, comparing it to the offer, and seeing how much risk you want - something clearly beyond the skill of the contestants I saw. Do they give prospect a math test, and let on those who flunk?
Anyhow, behavioral economists are probably taping this show as a gold mine of data on how people make decisions against their best interests.
Yeah, there’s definitely something fishy with the online version’s AI. I was offered $0 for the last four offers, basically forcing me to get the amount in my case. It was $25. Meh. This game is getting old real fast, and I’ve only played about six games.
I’ve never seen the gameshow and other than having heard it takes no skill or knowledge I had no idea what its premise was til I played Hal’s link above.
Damn!
It’s inspiration must be a childhood memory similar to those balloons that used to have in the K-Mart cafeteria. Choose one from a bin: one has a sundae for a penny and another has one for full price and others are somewhere in between.
Where can I send in my ideas for gameshows? I have two that I don’t want to spoil the plot of, but I’ll give you their titles (Links may or may not be work-safe depending on where you work (nothing graphic but also not what you’d call wholesome):
The All New $500,000 Flip A Coin (hosted by Jim J. Bullock and the Nikita Girls
The $1 Million Paper Scissor Rocks Challenge with host Erin Moran and her American Storm Boys
The $3 Million Dollar K-Mart Sundae Bin Bonanza with hosts Donnie & Marie Osmond and The Bangkok Barbacks
There are some interesting things about the show, mainly just watching & discussing the players’ decision-making. I also like their reactions after they’ve taken the deal and Howie asks them to play through the remaining cases. Generally, they strike me as the kind of people who would yell at you for “taking their card” in blackjack.
I think this is part of a general trend in game shows, away from shows about some degree of skill (Jeopardy) toward shows about the “drama” of people dealing with huge amounts of money.
There was a show where the contestant was a doctor who worked for a charity that gave free health care to the poor, or something like that. Anyway, they made the top amount $1.5 million for him. I thought that was pretty cool.
I haven’t seen the show in question, but the OP immediately brought to my mind the famous H. L. Mencken quote: “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
I could not agree more. I’d never even seem this puppy (no cable means the TV is usually off), but last night I happened upon it about 15 minutes before it ended. I watched…watched…and nothing happened. Zero. There were no decisions, no explanations, just a bunch of audience members hooting moronically while this girl decided whether to take a deal that I didn’t really understand because nothing happened while I watched except I got to watch Howie Mendel talk on a fake cell phone. THAT’S fun. Sometimes I just go to Market Street & watch people use the fun. The suspense is nearly unbearable.
And Howie Mendel? Please. Go back to Bobbby’s World. Or get some hair. It’s really off-putting seeing Montel-esque, cueball Howie Mendel. At least I can’t confuse him with Paul Reiser anymore.
I find the show interesting just to see how much people are willing to risk for a chance at even more. I do wish they wouldn’t draw it out so much though and I would like them to have contestants that are more normal instead of people they have auditioned to see how “interesting” and apparently how stupid they are.
I did enjoy the show where the man decided to continue with only one high-dollar amount left against the advice of his two preteen children. When they opened that $300,000 dollar case, you could hear the anger in the kids voices as they said how stupid he was.
Anyway, in this article Mitch Metcalf says he thinks the odds are against a “very, very long run” for the show. I suspect they have an even more negative outlook on its staying power and are milking it for all it is worth while it is hot.
A few times I chose very poorly throughout the game, and wound up with a handful of cases, all offering low amounts. The banker’s offer? $0. I respectfully declined.
I had another game where I had a perfect best-worst matchup – the final two cases were the million dollar case and a one-cent case. His offer was $300,000. (I shoulda taken it…grumble grumble…)
For those of us who aren’t mathematically inclined, how do you perform the “simple matter of computing the expected value” without benefit of pen and paper?
You were watching the wrong thing on your screen. If you looked carefully behind the chanting woman you could see somebody in the background jumping a shark tank.
Since the low values are so small compared to the big ones, if you have a $200K case, a $400K case, and 3 under $100 cases left, (I don’t remember the actual high values) you can neglect the small ones and divide $600K by 5 to get $120 K. I suspect they offer less than $120 K in this situation because most people will take less to avoid the chance of getting basically nothing. That calculation is beyond me - If I were them I’d do some experiments to find it.
**The Scrivener ** and **scotandrsn ** give pretty good explanations of the thought processes (so-called) behind playing the game, and why I kinda like it. Actually, I like it a lot.
But Monday’s was a terrible example, if you saw it for the first time. It was a one-hour show padded out to 2 hours with 50% air. It was excruciating.
The show sucks ass. I’d be willing to be on it though. Anyone who knows two or three words of English would have the skills to win at least twenty grand. Plus, I could could sneeze on Howie.
