Monty and Marilyn

A puzzle:

Imagine that you’re on a television game show and the host presents you with three closed doors. Behind one of them, sits a sparkling, brand-new Lincoln Continental; behind the other two, are smelly old goats. The host implores you to pick a door, and you select door #1. Then, the host, who is well-aware of what’s going on behind the scenes, opens door #3, revealing one of the goats.

“Now,” he says, turning toward you, “do you want to keep door #1, or do you want to switch to door #2?”

Statistically, which choice gets you the car: keeping your original door, or switching?

Also a puzzle: what happened when an incredibly intelligent woman suggested an answer to this?

The outcry was so tremendous that vos Savant was forced to devote three subsequent columns to explaining why her logic was correct. Even in the wake of her well-stated, clear responses, she continued to be berated. “I still think you’re wrong,” wrote one man, nearly a year later. “There is such a thing as female logic.”

Read the full article – it’s a mathematical (and misogynist) head-scratcher!

Via Hoyden About Town.

QOTD: Mansplaining in Macquarie

Macquarie Dictionary has declared “mansplaining” to be its word of the year, and some people aren’t happy about that. Amy Gray responds in The Guardian:

Of course there are criticisms of using the term mansplaining to excess, and they’re most likely valid. But that isn’t sexism, that’s people stupidly overusing words they don’t understand, like “bae”, “budget surplus” and “minister for women”.

Oh snap.

QOTD: What do words even mean?

Quote of the day, from Every Internet Conversation With Dudes, Ever:

Woman: Let’s talk about consent.
Dude: What does “consent” mean? What do words mean? “Yes?” “No?” What does anything mean? I’m not a word genius.

Oh, if only I had a dollar for every political argument that ends up in a death-spiral of “but if we re-interpret these very simple words in a completely bizarre way they mean something different!”

(And don’t worry, men, it’s not just/all dudes who do it. But … it is a lot of you.)