Monty Hall was the host of a TV game show called "Let's Make a Deal." I watched it when I was a boy and it was quite entertaining. One of the specific games on the show involved offering to allow a contestant to pick one out of three wrapped prizes. Some of the prizes were valuable, but one was often a worthless gag. After the contestant chose one gift, Monty invariably removed one of the two wrapped gifts that the contestant did not take. He then asked the contestant if he/she wanted to trade the box he/she originally chose in return for choosing the other remaining gift. Should the contestant stay put or should he/she switch? My gut feeling says that there is nothing to gain by switching, but there are many experts who disagree with me. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about the Monty Hall problem. Many mathematically-inclined experts insist that you should ALWAYS switch after Monte takes away one of the three hidden prizes. There’s all kinds of high end mathematics involved in many of these analysis (see here for instance). The dispute gets really high-pitched sometimes, which is usually a clue that experts are claiming to be certain when they really don’t have any right to be. What I’m wondering is this: why don’t some social scientists simply gather empirical data in a lab? Assign someone to be Monty and let college students play the roles of contestants. Set the experimental parameters precisely (this needs to be done carefully because there is some question as to what, exactly Monty knows and does) and run the test over and over, until you’ve got LOTS of data. Have some students always make the switch. Have others never make the switch. Then tally the results and tell the mathematicians that you have the real answer. So that’s my thought: allow real-world trials tell the theoreticians the answer. Then let’s move on, please. Or has someone actually run the Monty Hall skit over and over in a lab yet and added up the results? I haven’t seen it yet, if this has been done.