I was thinking about why people who are supposedly better than math at me, and thus “smarter,” have trouble understanding the Monty Hall Problem. And though I did not get quite to the heart of why they have issues with this rather trivial problem, part of it is that I think to be good at math as most people define it, you have to ignore the real world almost totally.

I’ve never been able to do that. I need to deeply understand why a concept applies to the real world to be able to do anything at all with it.

And the Monty Hall Problem is all about the how and why of having more information then changes the odds. Almost all of the time, the mathematically inclined have no clue at all what any of their equations mean, imply, or could possibly be used for.

I find this very odd indeed.