Pick-a-Door Contest Results

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to the Pick-a-door Contest results post. This is the eighth economics contest for 2023. This post contains a video of an Excel Model. This Excel Model determines the winner of the contest by determining which doors contain a positive monetary value behind them.

Winner determined in this video

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What is the Pick-a-Door Contest?

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For the benefit of those who did not enter this contest, here is a brief explanation of how the game works.

In this contest, participants were required to make decisions based on expected payoff and risk. Participants were presented with 12 doors. Behind each door there could be a prize (expressed in dollars). Each door had a possible prize worth a different amount. As the value increased the probability of the prize being behind the door decreased. For example, Door 3 had a 72% chance of a prize worth $34 and Door 9 had a 40% chance of a prize worth $180. If the prize is not there, the participant will receive a value of zero.

Opening a door costs $10. Each participant was given a budget of $40. Therefore, each participant could open as many as 4 of the 12 doors. Participants were not compelled to use all of the budget. If a participant opened 2 or more doors that have zero value behind them, they are eliminated from the contest. If not eliminated, the winner is the participant with the highest total value expressed in dollars (i.e. combined value of prizes minus cost of opening doors).

Responses to the contest were made in the comments section of the contest post. If several participants obtain the same total value, the person who entered (commented) first wins. The account with the winning entry will receive 30 Hive Power.

The format of the required entry is explained in detail in the contest itself.

For a more detailed explanation, you can access the contest post using the following link.

Results of the Pick-a-door Contest

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Table 1 contains the participants and the doors they selected.

Table 1: Doors selected by participants

Table 2 contains the potential prizes behind each door, the probability that the prize will be there, and the actual prize based on the Excel Model.

Table 2: Prizes behind each door

Table 3 contains the prizes each participant won, total value of prizes, and the Contest winner (highlighted in red).

Table 3: Contest Winner

All participants avoided opening more than one door with a zero value behind it. @pwbanker obtained the highest total value. This amounted to $303. All four doors opened had a positive value. This included doors with high values such as 7 and 9. @pwbanker wins 30 Hive Power.

None of the participants managed to open the combination of doors that would have achieved the highest possible total. This combination would have been Doors 4, 5, and 7, and 9. This would have accumulated a total prize worth $347. @alohaed was just one door away from obtaining this combination.

Contest Tips and Analysis

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This contest relies very heavily on luck. Any of the doors could have prizes behind them. As more participants enter, the results depend even more greatly on luck. Even so, a good strategy could increase your chances of winning. It helps if participants have a good idea of the number of participants entering and the choices they have made. Therefore, entering late offers an advantage in that aspect. For example, if only two participants have entered. Participant 1 has decided to open only Door 1 and Participant 2 to only open Door 12. At this point, Participant 1 has an 81% chance of winning, Participant 2 only has a 10% chance of winning, and there is a 9% it will be a tie.

Participant 3 could choose to open any of the Doors 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7 to have a better chance of winning than either Participant 1 or 2. If Participant 3 knows no other participant will enter, opening Door 2 is the best option. Participant 3 would have over a 72% chance of winning, Participant 1 would only have around a 16% of winning (very big drop), and Participant 2 would still have a 10% of winning. There would be less than a 2% chance of a tie. As more participants enter, the chances of winning from selecting high percentage low payout options decreases significantly. Low percentage high payout options may fall but by a lower percentage.

For this contest, there were a relatively low number of participants (8). Selecting middle percentage middle payout options would have been a good strategy. However, there is still a risk of opening more than one door without a prize. This risk can be mitigated by selecting to open only three doors instead of four. For example, just opening Doors 7, 8 and 9. This would have obtained a score of 285. In this contest, that participant would have placed second.

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More posts

I have several collection of posts. I have organised these collections based on content and purpose.

The first collection contains six collection posts created before PeakD had the collection feature. Four of these posts relate to the core of my content, one of them contains all my Actifit Posts, and one of the them contains my video course ‘Economics is Everyone’.

The second collection consists of the posts that I consider define my channel. These posts are significant in terms of content as well as how they contribute to the growth of the channel. These posts reveal the most about what I believe in.

The third and fourth collection is what I call my ‘Freedom-base Economics living book’. They contain all the posts that support my ideas about the value and power of freedom. Some of these posts explain what we can achieve with freedom and what we need to utilise it. Some of them explain how we are deprived of freedom and how we often give up freedom for security and comfort. The third collection concludes with possible scenarios depending on what we (society) choose to do.

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