21 and Bringing Down the House (spoilers)

[snowdenscold]

Apologies if I missed an earlier thread on this.

So I saw 21 last night after having read the book several years ago.

I guess I was fairly disappointed. Perhaps that was because I thought they would stay a bit more faithful to the book (which, now looking into it, was not entirely accurate either). Instead, about the only similarity is the fact that a bunch of students from MIT go to Vegas to count Blackjack.

Everything just seemed so forced. There was the obligatory love (or at least boy/girl pairing) story. There was the obligatory antagonist(s). There was the obligatory con / twist. Even his two friends were beyond caricature. They seemed like they belonged as the nerdy friends in Can't Hardly Wait - at least that wasn't trying to take itself seriously at the same time. And the "photo recognition software"... don't even get me started on that misused plot device.

I don't know - I guess I was just hoping for something different; something that resembled the actual story - only put to film. Something that would end with text on the screen at the end describing their total winnings and how Vegas had to change a bunch of things a result.

[brevity]

It was an okay movie for such a loose adaptation. The book was, naturally, a lot better, but also a lot more Asian. While there were 2 Asians in the team of protagonists, they really weren't given much to do.

As a Vegas resident, I was disappointed that Hollywood gets the geography wrong once again. Typical scene: Kate Bosworth's character says that the Hard Rock has comped her a suite, and then you see a giant room overlooking the Bellagio fountain. Huh?

[snowdenscold]

Oh, and a follow on. As someone who heard the Monty Hall problem way back in high school - his feat in the classroom wasn't exactly awing. It was sort of like "oh, give me a break - that's what qualifies him as a math genius?"

[Truth]

I thought the book was very good, and I was really looking forward to this movie. Oh well... Mildly disappointing, but I'll probably go see this at some point anyway...

[brevity]

Oh, and a follow on. As someone who heard the Monty Hall problem way back in high school - his feat in the classroom wasn't exactly awing. It was sort of like "oh, give me a break - that's what qualifies him as a math genius?"

I realize that everyone in a real MIT advanced math course would know that problem by heart, but I actually thought that scene was appropriate for two reasons:

1. A famous problem is a lot less alienating to general audiences than an unknown one.

2. A lot of very smart people still disagree on the answer, and I thought Jim Sturgess' character explained it quite succinctly. A casual viewer who's familiar with the problem will accept that scene and not dwell on it too much.

[dkbaseball]

Maybe someone can explain a scene at the beginning of the movie to the math-challenged, i.e., me -- the scene where the lead character demonstrates to Kevin Spacey what a whiz he is. It's been three weeks since I saw it, so I'm a little spacey in my recollection. Anyway, as I recall: Spacey asks him to choose one of three boxes he has drawn on the board, and he picks box A. Then Spacey eliminates box C as a possibility, and asks him if he still wants to select box A. He changes his answer to box B, and Spacey says this is the correct move, explaining that when there were three boxes he had a 33 percent chance of being right, but after box C had been eliminated, some sort of process -- forget what he called it -- determined that there was now a 67 percent chance that box B was the right answer.

I'm just not getting this. Once C has been eliminated, why is there not then a 50 percent chance for both A and B?

Just read more carefully. I guess I don't know what the Monty Hall problem is. Okay, now I've tried to read the link explaining it, and I'm still confused.

[JasonEvans]

Maybe someone can explain a scene at the beginning of the movie to the math-challenged, i.e., me -- the scene where the lead character demonstrates to Kevin Spacey what a whiz he is. It's been three weeks since I saw it, so I'm a little spacey in my recollection. Anyway, as I recall: Spacey asks him to choose one of three boxes he has drawn on the board, and he picks box A. Then Spacey eliminates box C as a possibility, and asks him if he still wants to select box A. He changes his answer to box B, and Spacey says this is the correct move, explaining that when there were three boxes he had a 33 percent chance of being right, but after box C had been eliminated, some sort of process -- forget what he called it -- determined that there was now a 67 percent chance that box B was the right answer.

I'm just not getting this. Once C has been eliminated, why is there not then a 50 percent chance for both A and B?

Just read more carefully. I guess I don't know what the Monty Hall problem is.

It is pretty simple actually--

When you first pick, there is a 1 in 3 chance you got the right box. That is easy for anyone to understand. But, when he eliminates one of the choices and says that choice was never right, he has not improved the chance your choice was right at all. You first choice was still a 1-in-3 shot -- 33%. That means that the remaining box is a 67% chance of being correct.

If he eliminated a box and then shuffled which box was the right box and let you choose again, then you are at a 50-50 choice, but if the "winning box" is never changed then you are still stuck with a box that had a 33% chance of being right. Taking one of the wrong choices away does nothing to improve the odds that you hit on a 33% chance. Does that make sense?

-Jason "I need to think a bit, but does this mean in Deal or No Deal you should always choose to trade suitcases at the end of the game?" Evans

[JasonEvans]

Here is a decent website for explaining the Monty Hall mathematics principal.

http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.monty.hall.html

--Jason "and you can actually play the Monty Hall game here!" Evans

[snowdenscold]

2. A lot of very smart people still disagree on the answer.

What do you mean? I assume you are referring to the whether or not the host will always knowingly pick the goat door (and would never reveal the car). If this assumption is true - then there is no room for disagreement.