Survivor 26: Caramoan Pool & Discussion (Fans VS Favorites)

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by trackercowe

I've never fully understood this logic, same with how it was said in 21. You say there was a 50% chance of picking the better item by choosing one of the other two, but what if the best item WAS in the one he originally chose.

It is hard to rationalize in your head, the trick is you have to seperate out the choices...

When Probst introduced the other two covered plates (to go along with the original) the odds became a 1/3 chance of picking the "right" plate (33.3%) because at that point all plate options were open to him but the choice at that point wasn't "pick one of these three" it was "pick the original one or pick to make a choice between the other two". Had he picked "the choice between the other two" the original plate he bought leaves the equation, the original plate would no longer be an option so had he done that he would have moved his odds from 1/3 to 1/2 (50%). The other thing to consider is that the odds were 66.66% that the best prize amoung all three was in one of the other two plates.

Of course the flip side is that you increase your odds of getting the worst prize by 16.7% as well. If loss aversion is your primary focus then you pick the original basket so long as you anticipate prize variance. Game theory featuring Imperfect Information hurts my brain so I'll stop talking now.

[SilverGS]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

Same thing I said last week, take that Sherri girl to the end. She is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, exactly what you want to happen at the final tribal council.

Part of me wanted Malcolm to punch Andrea in the face when she sat there like a 3 year old smiling and being as fake as she possibly could. There is no way that girl wins a million dollars, I think right now that as long as Cochrane makes it to the end this is his game.

He needs to reign that cockiness in just a bit though before the end, jury members don't mind being told they were out played, but they don't like you rubbing it in.

You hated Andrea's move because it was an annoyance to the person you like best? That move was brilliant for the time being. Either he finds it so you know or you take it right from under him. Win/Win with a catch. It probably lost his vote on the jury if she makes the final 3. Anyways it was obviously editing since they still didn't know if he had it or not. He or one of the others must have had time to go look for it alone or they would not have needed to split the vote.

Andrea is much more agressive since being passive last time got her booted out but she maybe too aggressive. She is either not liked enough or considered a threat so her name always seem to be floating around.

I agree Cochrane will take this if he makes it to the finals. Excellent game so far.

Reynold annoys me. Yeah he is a bit of an underdog the whole game but he did it to himself. Creates a too small pretty persons alliance, never seems to really care what the non pretty/cool people have to say. His dismissal of Cochrane's tip during the challenge just kind of showed me how he treats people not part of his "stock". Like the jock dismissing the nerd in high school. It hasn't been apparent that he has even tried to be nice to these people to try and get some sort of in.

[CaptainCrunch]

The problem for Cochrane is that he's starting to get Arrogant, and on top of it, nobody wants to go against him in the final three.

At the first sign of cracks in his alliance where he tries to shift on him . . . well they need him right now, but when they don't they'll cast him out like a leper, You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

The problem for Cochrane is that he's starting to get Arrogant, and on top of it, nobody wants to go against him in the final three.

Not a problem so long as he confines it to the camera and not to other players. Not sure people realize how much of a winners threat he is yet. No one even talked about getting rid of him until yesterdays episode when Malcolm said in in confessional. Before that it was all Phillip and Andrea. He's nicely shielded by the remaining Bros'R'Us being bigger immunity threats in the short-term and Erik being wishy-washy (I personally think Erik is throwing challanges... no way he's as bad at them as he's seemed).

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

At the first sign of cracks in his alliance where he tries to shift on him . . . well they need him right now, but when they don't they'll cast him out like a leper, You see, their morals, their code, it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these... these civilized people, they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.

A mental image of Cochrane as Batman brings a smile to my face.

[GreenLantern]

Originally Posted by SilverGS

You hated Andrea's move because it was an annoyance to the person you like best? That move was brilliant for the time being.

Yes that is exactly why I hated it. And I never said it wasn't brilliant.

Cochrane will pull a blind side here soon, he has too, he is becoming to big of a threat. I hope he somehow pins it on Sherri though... maybe people view her as a swing vote and he can swing her to his side and pin all the blame on her.

Dawn was on Cochranes season wasn't she? Maybe they will voltron up and do something here. From the preview we see of next weeks episode I think things start crumbling, but not until they get rid of Reynold. Andrea has the biggest target though, so she will be the first of the major alliance to go. She screwed herself over by playing too aggressive.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Parallex

It is hard to rationalize in your head, the trick is you have to seperate out the choices...

When Probst introduced the other two covered plates (to go along with the original) the odds became a 1/3 chance of picking the "right" plate (33.3%) because at that point all plate options were open to him but the choice at that point wasn't "pick one of these three" it was "pick the original one or pick to make a choice between the other two". Had he picked "the choice between the other two" the original plate he bought leaves the equation, the original plate would no longer be an option so had he done that he would have moved his odds from 1/3 to 1/2 (50%). The other thing to consider is that the odds were 66.66% that the best prize amoung all three was in one of the other two plates.

Of course the flip side is that you increase your odds of getting the worst prize by 16.7% as well. If loss aversion is your primary focus then you pick the original basket so long as you anticipate prize variance. Game theory featuring Imperfect Information hurts my brain so I'll stop talking now.

The only reason the Monty Hall problem works like is because Monty would always reveal the empty door adding extra information. Jeff wasn't under the same constraints and there was no new information given on the prizes so therefore none of that matters. It was 33.33%, simply luck. If Reynold knew that there was now 2 prizes (or even a half prize) it would make sense, but it could have just as easily been 2 pig brains added. It comes down to 3 covered plates and a choice to pick 1, that's it, everything else is overthinking and/or going with information we found out after.

Originally Posted by trackercowe

I've never fully understood this logic, same with how it was said in 21. You say there was a 50% chance of picking the better item by choosing one of the other two, but what if the best item WAS in the one he originally chose.

Forget about what happened in Survivor. Here's the real problem. There's 3 doors, 1 has a car, the other 2 are empty. You pick a door. Now Monty will reveal an empty door that you haven't chosen. That gets lost in translations often.

If you don't switch, you simply have a 33.33% chance of winning, should be obvious. Now if you decide to switch here's the 2 scenarios:

Scenario 1 (33.33% chance):
The first door you picked was the car.
Monty reveals 1 of the 2 unchosen doors (both are empty in this scenario).
You're given a choice to swap with the unopened door, you do, you lose.

Scenario 2 (66.66% chance):
The first door you picked was empty.
Monty reveals the unchosen door that wasn't picked (the remaining closed door contains the car).
You're given a choice to swap with the unopened door, you do, you win.

[Parallex]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

Cochrane will pull a blind side here soon, he has too, he is becoming to big of a threat. I hope he somehow pins it on Sherri though... maybe people view her as a swing vote and he can swing her to his side and pin all the blame on her.

Dawn was on Cochranes season wasn't she? Maybe they will voltron up and do something here. From the preview we see of next weeks episode I think things start crumbling, but not until they get rid of Reynold. Andrea has the biggest target though, so she will be the first of the major alliance to go. She screwed herself over by playing too aggressive.

Agree'd, not next tribal, they're going to get rid of Reynold first... He's found too many idols and done really well in to many competitions. Once Bros'R'Us is down to just Eddie someone on S'R'Us might think that it's time to cut a jury threat from their own alliance but I would bet that the six of them stay strong and the next boots are Reynold and Eddie (Immunity aside).

And yes Dawn was on Cochrane's season, she was actually the only one on their tribe that didn't treat him like useless garbage (and hence she was the only one that he warned that he was going to flip). They've been aligned since day one so no need to "Voltron Up"... S'R'Us was originally the three sets of two (Andrea & Phillip, Cochrane & Dawn, Malcolm & Corinne).

And yes if I were a betting man I'd bet that the first of the six voted out will be Andrea... the problem isn't that she aggressive it's that she's obviously aggressive.

[ernie]

Let's Make a Deal!

Imagine that the set of Monty Hall's game show Let's Make a Deal has three closed doors. Behind one of these doors is a car; behind the other two are goats. The contestant does not know where the car is, but Monty Hall does.

The contestant picks a door and Monty opens one of the remaining doors, one he knows doesn't hide the car. If the contestant has already chosen the correct door, Monty is equally likely to open either of the two remaining doors.

After Monty has shown a goat behind the door that he opens, the contestant is always given the option to switch doors. What is the probability of winning the car if she stays with her first choice? What if she decides to switch?


One way to think about this problem is to consider the sample space, which Monty alters by opening one of the doors that has a goat behind it. In doing so, he effectively removes one of the two losing doors from the sample space.
We will assume that there is a winning door and that the two remaining doors, A and B, both have goats behind them. There are three options:

1) The contestant first chooses the door with the car behind it. She is then shown either door A or door B, which reveals a goat. If she changes her choice of doors, she loses. If she stays with her original choice, she wins.

2)The contestant first chooses door A. She is then shown door B, which has a goat behind it. If she switches to the remaining door, she wins the car. Otherwise, she loses.

3) The contestant first chooses door B. She is then is shown door A, which has a goat behind it. If she switches to the remaining door, she wins the car. Otherwise, she loses.

Each of the above three options has a 1/3 probability of occurring, because the contestant is equally likely to begin by choosing any one of the three doors. In two of the above options, the contestant wins the car if she switches doors; in only one of the options does she win if she does not switch doors. When she switches, she wins the car twice (the number of favorable outcomes) out of three possible options (the sample space). Thus the probability of winning the car is 2/3 if she switches doors, which means that she should always switch doors - unless she wants to become a goatherd.

This result of 2/3 may seem counterintuitive to many of us because we may believe that the probability of winning the car should be 1/2 once Monty has shown that the car is not behind door A or door B. Many people reason that since there are two doors left, one of which must conceal the car, the probability of winning must be 1/2. This would mean that switching doors would not make a difference. As we've shown above through the three different options, however, this is not the case.

One way to convince yourself that 2/3 is the correct probability is to do a simulation with a friend. Have your friend impersonate Monty Hall and you be the contestant. Keep track of how often you win the car by switching doors and by not switching doors. Computer simulations are also available:

http://math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Monty/monty.html

The results from that page:

Here is a summary of how previous contestants have fared.

Switched 1432 players 968 winners 67.6%
Didn't Switch 1363 players 460 winners 33.7%

If you're still not convinced that 2/3 is the correct probability, here are two more ways to think about the problem.

It seems to make sense that you have a 1/3 chance of picking the correct door. This means, however, that since the probabilities must add up to one - and the car has to be somewhere - you also have a 2/3 chance of not picking the correct door. In other words, you are more likely not to win the car than to win it.

Imagine that Monty opens a door and shows that there's only a goat behind it. Consider that the car is more likely to be behind a door other than the one you choose. Monty has just shown that one of those two doors - which together have the greater probability of concealing the car - actually conceals a goat. This means that you should definitely switch doors, because the remaining door now has a 2/3 chance of concealing the car.

Why? Well, your first choice still has a 1/3 probability of being the correct door, so the additional 2/3 probability must be somewhere else. Since you know that one of the two doors that previously shared the 2/3 probability does not hide the car, you should switch to the other door, which still has a 2/3 chance of concealing the car.

What if there were 1,000 doors? You would have a 1/1,000 chance of picking the correct door. If Monty opens 998 doors, all of them with goats behind them, the door that you chose first will still have a 1/1,000 chance of being the one that conceals the car, but the other remaining door will have a 999/1,000 probability of being the door that is concealing the car. Here switching sounds like a pretty good idea.

[trackercowe]

Crazy second vote tonight, even though I saw it coming. Andrea thought too far ahead, just like Malcolm ended up doing a few weeks ago. She should of stuck with voting off Eddie this week, then went after Brenda next week.

The sad thing is the finalie/final vote is looking bleaker than ever before. All the biggest and more interesting players are pretty much gone now, and aside from Cochran there isn't one interesting player remaining. I probably won't even bother to watch a the last episode if we're left with any combination of Dawn/Sherri/Brenda/Eddie/Erik. Aside from Dawn (who's boring in her own right) none of those players had made any big moves in the game, and have essentially been background pieces for the majority of the season.

[SilverGS]

Oh Andrea too much too fast. Overcompensated for sitting back last time.

Funny, Brenda has also done a complete reversal from last time from balls to the wall strategic to sitting back and guess who is still around and probably at least top 5 if not top 3 at this point.

Gotta hand it to Andrea tough she took it like a champ. Laughed it off, gave props for their move and walked off with a smile.

[CaptainCrunch]

Pretty much and once again the final three is going to be populated by probably 1 good player and 2 moronic follower sheep who's greatest attribute is that they literally said yes boss whatever you say boss, rarely if ever win challenges and are basically worthless.

Its the biggest hole in the game. Then they'll brag about their brilliant strategy while getting hammered by the jury.

I'm saddened that Andrea is gone, she was playing the game well and got impatient.



Its stupid that not one of them thought that tonight was the ultimate night for the ultimate move of getting Cochrane the one guy who can think his way to the end of the game and knows the game out. '

I'm pretty sure that if I was playing the game and I went "Cochrane, lets gut the nerd"

I get Andrea, Erik, Eddie and probably one or two of the moronic sheep.

Anyways, goodbye Andrea you will be missed

[trackercowe]

For anyone who wants to know the rumored format for next season please hit the spoiler button.

Spoiler!

Favorites vs. Family will be taking place during season 27. There are expected casts lists floating around, but nothing really 100% confirmed. What we do know is that surprisingly none of the Hantz' clan will be involved.

[GreenLantern]

Cochrane said it, all about timing, that was the perfect time to broach the subject of getting rid of Andrea as she was drawing too much attention to herself. The nail in the coffin was when she admitted she wanted to take Eddie to the final 3, not realizing that a lot of people on that jury would probably vote for him (especially those you back stabbed) over her.

Looks like Erik goes crazy next episode, guy is a little different on a good day.. Sherri really bugs me, she hasn't done crap in this game since the merge, so annoying. Anyone of the favourites would be stupid not to take her to the final 3 at this point.

Here is how it will go:

Sherri: I was the mastermind of this game, I had control to flip at any point and I didn't!

Jury: You were a bum and did nothing, you were a yes ma'am that followed Cochrane or Dawn or Brenda along like a good little sheep. Had you actually flipped that would have counted as a move and would have earned you huge credit here at the final tribal council. But you didn't, so prepare to get yelled at.

Sherri: *blank stare as her world comes crumbling down around her* No... noo... I had it all... I HAD IT ALL! (#$*@ YOU GUYS I HAD IT ALL , I DID IT ALL IT WAS ME I AM SO UGLY AND GROSS AND HARD TO LOOK AT!!!!

And then the jury goes and votes for Cochrane, end game.

[JD]

I think Brenda is playing the game much harder and smarter than what the editing is showing. As mentioned, in her previous season, she was right in the forefront of it all and got burned by it. It seems her strategy is the tried-and-true "as long as it's not me" one. Lurk in the background until the crosshairs are looking for you. This was the first week she had the crosshairs on her and she came out more than less guns blazing. Strong in both challenges and then got things to go her way in the vote. Sure, Cochrane probably had more to do with it than her, but still... it's working!

[Rhettzky]

Updated:

Remaining:
1. Aeneas: Brenda Lowe - Brandon Hantz
5. Puxlut: Edward "Eddie" Fox - Julia Landauer
6. Flash Walken: John Cochran - Laura Alexander
7. hmmhmmcamo: Erik Reichenbach - Shamar Thomas
10. Komskies: Alexandra "Allie" Pohevitz - Sherri Biethman
12. GreenLantern: Dawn Meehan - Corinne Kaplan
13. Rhettzky: Andrea Boehlke - Erik Reichenbach
15. Aegypticus: Laura Alexander - Edward "Eddie" Fox
16. red sky: Corinne Kaplan - Brenda Lowe
17. Cheese: Sherri Biethman - John Cochran
20. Regulator75: Michael Snow - Dawn Meehan

Eliminated:
8. KootenayFlamesFan: Shamar Thomas - Matt Bischoff
18. KevanGuy: Francesca Hogi - Hope Driskill
4. Yoho: Matt Bischoff - Phillip Sheppard
2. king_amonte: Phillip Sheppard - Michael Snow
3. transplant99: Malcolm Freberg - Francesca Hogi
19. 3 Justin 3: Brandon Hantz - Malcolm Freberg
11. ineedanother: Reynold Toepfer - Alexandra "Allie" Pohevitz
9. $ven27: Hope Driskill - Reynold Toepfer
14. SilverGS: Julia Landauer - Andrea Boehlke

[GreenLantern]

Bleh I am not going to win, even if Dawn makes the finale she is way too unstable to pull this off.. it's between Brenda and Cochrane now imo..

1. Aeneas: Brenda Lowe - Brandon Hantz
6. Flash Walken: John Cochran - Laura Alexander
16. red sky: Corinne Kaplan - Brenda Lowe
7. Cheese: Sherri Biethman - John Cochran

[Parallex]

Mad props to Andrea... that's how you should leave the game when you get got, smile on your face and a nod to those that outmanouvered you. I'm guessing that Eddie goes next. You don't want him to get to a position where he can win just two immunities to get to the final vote (Just three TC's left) where he'll have probably 3 votes for sure (Michael, Reynold, Malcolm) and maybe four with Andrea.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Parallex

Mad props to Andrea... that's how you should leave the game when you get got, smile on your face and a nod to those that outmanouvered you. I'm guessing that Eddie goes next. You don't want him to get to a position where he can win just two immunities to get to the final vote (Just three TC's left) where he'll have probably 3 votes for sure (Michael, Reynold, Malcolm) and maybe four with Andrea.

We've seen that before though, the smile and the nod and then 6 days to mull things over and to become an absolutely bitter jury member.

At this point in the game you really have to look at who your taking to the final three and how your actions are going to hamper you from getting votes from the Jury.

By rights Russell did the right thing by dragging people to the final three, but left a path of destruction all the way through the jury.

The only guys that really handled the jury side well were Richard Hatch, Boston Rob and Amber.

[Regulator75]

Spoiler!

[Bagor]

Originally Posted by SilverGS

Reynold annoys me. Yeah he is a bit of an underdog the whole game but he did it to himself. Creates a too small pretty persons alliance, never seems to really care what the non pretty/cool people have to say. His dismissal of Cochrane's tip during the challenge just kind of showed me how he treats people not part of his "stock". Like the jock dismissing the nerd in high school. It hasn't been apparent that he has even tried to be nice to these people to try and get some sort of in.

Yup, Brenda agreed with you when writing his name down.
"This game could have been a lot different for you if you'd shown some humility."