Has Cecil ever been wrong? Yes, he has.

Why can’t Cecil ever admit he is wrong?

Why in the Straight Dope’s FAQ does it say Cecil has never been wrong in his replies? I can assure you that yes, he has been wrong. Don’t believe me?

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_189.html

Note that in this post, Cecil NEVER mentions the three magic words “I WAS WRONG”. A man named Robert was the one who pointed out Cecil’s error, but due to clever wording, Cecil makes it sound as though Robert wasn’t entirely correct either, because he failed to mention “key assumptions”. What a croc. Everything involves key assumptions, the plain fact is CECIL WAS WRONG, but refused to admit he had been proven wrong by one of his readers.

  • Dippy

Speaking of wrong, this post likely ought to be in the Barbecue Pit.

Whadya want?

He never admitted he was wrong, and if you check the topic of my post “HAS CECIL EVER BEEN WRONG?”

I was proving he was wrong

Why in the Straight Dope’s FAQ does it say Cecil has never been wrong in his replies?

This thread is better suited to the forum “Comments on Cecil’s Columns,” so I’ll move it over there.

That is the literal truth, of course (although some of the body parts have been found, it must be admitted.) It was printed right in a newspaper ferkrissake. They couldn’t say it if it weren’t true. “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three.” You need a little help on at least two of the three, Dip.

Interesting use of a first post–attacking Cecil.

So what? Why won’t “I screwed this up” suffice? What is so “magic” about the word “wrong?”

(Incidentally, since you’re into “magic words” I assume you’d like me to correct your writing. The period at the end of your sentence belongs inside the close-quotation mark. The way you have it written is…wrong.)

“Has Cecil ever been wrong?” “Never.”

It’s called sense of humour. Cecil, like your parents, can never err.

Cecil’s errors are rare, and in over 25 years he’s been doing THE STRAIGHT DOPE, you could probably count his errors on one hand… like the Monty Hall door problem. Slightly more frequently, but still rarely, editing errors are made (Ed gets distracted), like the aforementioned books for the deaf. There are a few notable occasions (like DNA testing) where Cecil’s earlier information is supplanted by newer information; that’s not like Cecil was wrong, so much as that new information came out showing the old information was wrong. A fine point, you may say, but Cecil never claimed to know everything…

I know what you’re trying to do here, find an error in a post where someone is complaining about someone elses error. Unfortunately, you’ve found a non-error. {Besides which, this kind of “error” would only be good to find if they were complaining about punctuation errors.)

This is a matter of style not fact. That is, unless your religion claims that a Supreme Being engraved the words “Thou shalt put punctuation within the quote marks at the end of a sentence” on stone tablets, in which case, it’s a matter of faith.

The style you advocate is only an American style; British style puts them in the logical place, as do a number of Americans, notably computer programmers who are sensitive to logical placement of punctuation and the effects of misplacing them.

dtilque said:

Nah–I was just being pissy. Since the assertion here is pissy, I thought it fit in pretty well.

I wasn’t aware of that. I gotta say, though, that it looks like hell as far as I’m concerned.

Are you questioning the truth of the Supreme Punctuator, infidel?

By the way…in the first sentence I quoted, you forgot the apostrophy in “elses.”

<runs out the door>

In a column that has appeared for 25+ years, there will of course be occasional incidents or discrepencies. I have my own outstanding issues – see for example my comments in Cecil’s Lousy Call Letter Answer. Mistakes were made. But, of course, we learn from our mistakes. And, overall, the percentage for perfection in Cecil’s columns far exceeds the Harlem Globetrotters winning percentage over the old Washington Generals. Moreoever, it has been established – more on this later – that all of Cecil’s so-called errors were in fact the result of carelessness on other people’s parts.

I’m not privy to all the inside goings-on at the media titan which is the Chicago Reader, but I assume some of the problems have occurred when something like the following happens: “Cecil’s sick, Ed’s on vacation, we need a column pronto, the boss’ kid wants to write it, what harm could that be?” Scene now shifts to Cecil’s shrieking outrage at the monstrosity that went out under his name. To placate everyone, Little Ed decides to fall on his sword, and take full responsibility for the column, and also for leaving the coffee maker on all night.

Moreover, what about Cecil’s earlier editors, the ones who were there before Little Ed took over the post? Isn’t it possible that these individuals, although outstanding journalists, while under the intense pressure of serving Cecil might have wavered or drifted a little on a couple of occasions? (I am not in any way suggesting sabotage.)

I admire your courage in standing in the midst of Cecil’s establishment to inform us of his alleged failings. Might I suggest that, as your next activity, you consider leaping into the center of the ring in the middle of a professional wrestling match and bellowing This is all a charade! to the roaring approval of the audience and the participants? (A side note: Some have claimed that Cecil threw his “Monty Hall” match against Marilyn von S., but the replay clearly showed Cecil was bopped on the head with a chair, in complete violation of the rules, but the ref missed it because he was distracted on the sidelines by Marilyn’s tag-team partner. With Cecil out, his erstwhile partner, Little Ed, did his best of course, but fell valiantly to Marilyn’s deadly “sleeper hold”).

Maybe your religion isn’t based on the inerrancy of Unca Cece’s word. But, in my world, people like you make Cecil cry. I hope you’re happy…

Actually, the Monty Hall query does require “certain assumptions” to get the “right answer”, so Cece was NOT wrong. You must assume that Monty hall does not do this more often when you have originaly picked the right door, to get you to change to a “joke prize”. The assumptions made actually assume “monty” is a robot.

Pfff, well in that case we had better assume that by saying “door” he doesn’t actually mean “dog” and when he says “Monty” he isn’t talking about a helicopter.

The assumptions are irrelevant, the main point that was trying to be made was whether staying or swapping would increase the odds of being correct. Of course we are going to assume that Monty will always open a door and also that Monty knows which door is concealing the prize --> that was not the point.

That aside, my original topic was “Has Cecil ever been wrong? Yes he has.”

On a side note, I was just pointing out that Cecil failed to say “I was wrong” and that he tried to throw the error back on the guy who pointed it out saying “there is something that has eluded you as well”

That’s rubbish… Cecil was proved absolutely and totally 100% WRONG.

I think Cecil adequately and unequivocally admitted he was wrong. Still, his answer to this one has struck in my craw for a while. He took one of the basic rules to this problem, and decided it was a tacit assumption.

I mean, would it be fair to say that the best choice is ambiguous, because you can’t just assume that the player wants to win the car? Some people hate cars. Maybe the player had his license revoked and doesn’t want to win the car, since it will remind him of the shame of not being allowed to drive. No it wouldn’t be fair, because it is obvious from Marilyn’s problem that the player is supposed to want the car, just as it is obvious that Monty Hall will throw open a losing door every time.

But maybe I’m just bitter over Cecil slapping me around over at my Russian revolvers thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=331
It’s kind of weird to be accused of smugness by “the world’s smartest man”.

And you forgot to spell “apostrophe” correctly.

Boris B said:

What Cecil did was move it from the hypothetical problem statement to a more accurate representation of the game show situation. In the game show, Monty has no such restriction that the problem statement defines. So he was really illuminating the distinction between the ideal case puzzle and the real case game show. It is an important distinction that Monty himself has pointed out before.

If you want a tricky puzzle question to make your friends pull out their hair (and consequently drive yourself insane trying to prove the answer), then the puzzle is a neat question. But if you’re asking from the standpoint of wanting to know an actual strategy to use in the game show, then the assumptions become an important factor that affect the outcome, and must be considered in your strategy.

Exactly right Boris, you are totally correct. Who is to say the person wants to win the car?

It is very obvious, Cecil was proved absolutely positiveley WRONG by the guy who pointed out his error. But does Cecil mention this ANYWHERE?? No…

In fact, Cecil “informs us” that the reader was also wrong.

Bad luck Cecil, better luck next time.

Irishman said,

I really didn’t think the actual game show was anything like this. In fact, I have often unconsciously taken the phrase “the legendary Monty Hall” to mean “the Monty Hall who exists only in legend”. Obviously, he did exist, but I’ve only heard his name used in hypotheticals and in analogies (i.e., the Federal government can’t be Monty Hall to your special interest group). Turning this into an actual game show scenario is a really weird move, and I hadn’t considered the possibility before you mentioned it. I suppose we would all be better off now if someone had replaced the name “Monty Hall” in the original puzzle with the phrase “the archetypal game show host”.

The point is, I had understood this to be a classic puzzle, not a historical question about motivations. Another example of a puzzle of this type would be:
To get into a castle, you have to enter by one of two doors. There are a pair of twins guarding the doors, one at each. They are identical, except one always lies, the other always tells the truth. One guards the lair to the castle’s voracious dragon, who devours visitors. The other door leads to the castle proper, with feasts and fair maidens in it and stuff. You can’t tell which guard is which, or which door is which, and you can ask but one question. What question do you ask?

The way you shouldn’t approach this question is by speculating on your chances of defeating the dragon, trying to figure out why two identical twins would have such different attitudes toward honesty, trying to sneak up behind another visitor and listen to their question, etc. “Thinking outside the box” can be very useful in real life, but in terms of abstract puzzles, it should really be described as “playing off the field” … a puzzle is like a tennis game, and if you choose to play badminton in the parking lot, you have to understand the costs of that.

The assumptions are not irrelevant. Why would you assume that he always opens a door? The problem doesn’t state that. A very good case can be made that he only offers it some of the time, because 1) the real Monty Hall offered switching only part of the time, and 2) if you use game theory to figure what he should do, he shouldn’t offer it all the time.

Granted, Cecil screwed up with his first answer. But he did stumble into the better answer (50/50, based on the information provided), so I wouldn’t say he was wrong.

I can’t agree with you here. (2) If you use game theory to figure out what he should do, you’d have to figure out what constitutes “winning” from Monty’s perspective. I hereby declare that Monty “wins” whenever the contestant wins, so Monty has every incentive to consistently give as much information as possible, so long as he doesn’t break the rules. You can declare the opposite, and your declaration will have no more validity than mine, which is why you are not supposed to have to guess about people’s motivations in puzzles like this.

On the subject of (1), have you ever seen Let’s Make a Deal? I haven’t. I understood that the show had many different formats, none of which was exactly like the puzzle presented by Marilyn. And I am really certain that the puzzle was not designed exclusively for people who had watched the show, or figured that they had the power to read Monty’s mind.

What was stated in the problem?

What is ambiguous about this? As usual, there are some unspoken obvious assumptions. (A) Monty will always open a door, and it will be a loser. (B) Monty will not shoot you or stab you if you find the car. © You want to win a car. (D) You do not have an unreasoning hunger for goat meat. You’re right, it doesn’t say Monty always opens a losing door. It says he opens a losing door. Read the puzzle a hundred times and you will read the clause “the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door” 100 times.

This is a puzzle about probability and the value of information, not psychology. It is obvious to everyone who reads this problem, other than Cecil Adams and his most devoted fans, that Monty always opens a door. I consider myself a Cecil Adams fan, thought obviously not a very devoted one one.