Being the 26th edition of Assorted Nonsense, the official newsletter of Donovan Street Press Inc.
What can the Monty Hall Problem Tell us about Biden’s Candidacy?
The Monty Hall Problem is a probability problem named after the original host of the show Let’s Make a Deal.
Usually it’s presented as three closed doors. Two conceal goats. The other conceals a luxury automobile. You’re trying to figure out which door is concealing the automobile, cuz who wants to win a goat? Well, maybe some people (see comic above), but not me.
So Monty Hall asks you to pick a door.
You pick door number one.
“You think the car’s behind door number one?” Monty Hall asks you.
“Yes,” you tell him.
“Okay. Do you want to stick with door number one or change your choice to one of the other doors?” Monty asks.
Right now the odds are one out of three that you have picked the correct door, the one concealing the luxury automobile.
While you’re mulling this over (should I stick with door number one? Should I change? You panic… you don’t have enough information!) Monty says, “Let me help.”
Monty (who knows what’s behind each door) opens door number three. Lo and behold, there’s a goat behind door number three. So you were right that the luxury automobile was not behind door number three.
And now you have more information than you did before. You know that the car is not behind door number three. It’s behind either door number one (the one you’ve already chosen) or door number two.
“What’s it going to be?” Monty asks you. “Are you going to stick with door number one, or change your guess to door number two?”
What would you do?
Many people think that they should not change their choice.
They think that the odds are now one out of two that the car is behind the door that they have already chosen. That the odds have not changed, in other words.
But this is not true.
The Monty Hall Problem tells us that in this situation you should always change your choice because the odds are now greater that the luxury automobile is behind the door that you have not chosen. The odds are not one out of two. The odds that the car is behind the door that you have chosen remain one out of three. Removing the third door takes the odds from that door and adds them to the remaining door that you have not yet chosen. So the odds that the car is behind that single door become two out of three.
A helpful way to look at it is by imagining that instead of just a third door, there were actually 999,998 other possible doors, and instead of removing one door (and one possibility) Monty Hall removed all those other 999,998 doors (possibilities). Suddenly, intuitively, we see that the odds of the car being behind the first door remain small, whereas the possibility of the car being behind any of the other doors is much greater.
Now let’s apply this to President Biden’s current dilemma. In case you’ve been living under a rock, President Biden performed terribly during a recent debate with Donald Trump and now the question is: Should he stay in the Presidential race or drop out? Obviously there are a lot of factors. For example, precedent (um, pun not intended) seems to suggest that if Biden drops out of the race now it will result in the Democrats losing the election.
If we look at his dilemma through the lens of the Monty Hall Problem, there are still three doors. “Democrats decrease their odds of winning the election” is behind two of the doors. ‘Democrats increase their odds of winning the election” is behind one of the doors. Obviously, Biden would prefer that the Democrats increase their odds of winning the election. (A guarantee that the Democrats will win the election does not exist behind any of the doors. All Biden can win by selecting the correct door is better odds of the Democrats winning the election.) (For now, we won’t get into what’s at stake if the Democrats lose the election.)
For the Democrats best shot at winning the election, Biden has got to choose the right door.
Door number one is “stay in the race, risk performing poorly.”
Door number two is “drop out of the race in favour of another candidate.”
Door number three is “stay in the race, perform well.”
The Democrats best shot at winning the election is behind only one of those doors. Decreasing the odds of them winning is behind the other two.
“What’s your choice?” Monty Hall asks Biden.
Right now, in the real world, it appears that Biden has chosen the door labelled “stay in the race, risk performing poorly.”
“Okay,” says Monty. “You’re not getting any younger, so I think it’s safe to assume that on average your performance is not going to get any better, so let’s remove door number three, the one in which you stay in the race and trust that you perform well."
Now only two doors remain: Biden staying in the race and risking performing poorly versus dropping out of the race in favour of another candidate hopefully performing better.
“Do you stick with your choice of staying in the race?” Monty asks Biden. “Or do you drop out of the race in favour of another candidate?”
Should Biden change his choice?
The Monty Hall Problem suggests that if Biden drops out of the race the Democrats have a two thirds better shot of winning the election than if Biden stays in the race, where they would have only a one third better shot.
Does the Monty Hall Problem map perfectly onto Biden’s dilemma? Probably not. Should Biden run such a critical decision through the Monty Hall filter? Again, probably not.
But I know which choice I would make if I were Biden.
TV Show Review: Sugar
My wife and I were looking for a new show to watch.
“What would you like?” I asked her.
“How about a mystery?”
I’d heard about a new detective show on Apple TV starring Collin Farrell called Sugar. All I knew about it was that it was supposed to be good. We didn’t subscribe to Apple and I hate all these stupid streaming services but I was in no mood to mess around; we had limited time to decide upon a show. So I subscribed and we started watching.
And were pretty much immediately hooked.
I have to be careful what I write cuz spoilers would really mess up this show for you.
It’s quite stylish. There are some nice flourishes involving brief clips of old movies, mysteries, noir and the like. It’s fun trying to identify the movies, actors and characters in these brief 2-3 second clips, though it’s frustrating too as I always wanted to see more.
Colin Farrell is great. As a younger actor he never really caught my attention. And then I saw him in The Banshees of Innershin with Brendan Gleesan. Farrell is a revelation in that movie, completely believable and sympathetic as a simple dude utterly unable to understand why his best friend (Gleesan) has forsaken him. Seeing Farrell in that movie is what made me interested in seeing him in Sugar.
In Sugar, Farrell is smarter but no less sympathetic. There are a lot of “save the cat” (and dog) moments the purpose of which is exactly that: to make the character of Sugar more sympathetic. They work, especially because there’s a bit of depth to them, along with the occasional reversal.
Amy Ryan is also worth mentioning, playing an ex Rock 'n Roll junkie in a charming, charismatic performance.
But you can’t talk about Sugar without mentioning the twist (and not saying too much about it). This twist, which happens at the end of the sixth episode, appears to have completely divided audiences. Many either love it or hate it. I wasn’t crazy about it but, given my genre sympathies, I could handle it, and I quickly saw how every episode up to that point had subtly prepared us for that moment. The issue, I think, is that it is a classic case of “withheld information.” Important information that really should have been revealed at the end of the first episode. Then people could have decided for themselves if they were up for this particular ride.
I am not a fan of withholding important information in storytelling. I believe in getting the pertinent facts all out there as soon as possible, when it makes sense to do so, the better to generate suspense and interest. I would have constructed Sugar differently.
Just the same, I thoroughly enjoyed this suspenseful and entertaining series, the twist and my storytelling quibbles notwithstanding. I’ll definitely check out Season Two, if there is one.
Book Distributors
Regular readers know I’ve been exploring book distributors to understand how that side of the business works. Today we will look at this company:
Itasca
Based in Minneapolis, Itasca Books Distribution and Fulfillment is a division of a company called Bookmobile. They both operate out of the same building. Bookmobile’s focus is printing; Itasca’s focus is distribution.
One thing I like initially about Itasca is the amount of information about them available on their website. They’re pretty clear about exactly what they offer. A few of the distributors I’ve covered previously are really stingy with their info, making me infinitely less interested in them.
So what does Itasca tell us about themselves?
Like several other distributors I’ve covered, they are focussed on independent publishers. They call themselves a “goldilocks” fit for publishers that publish multiple titles but that are maybe not quite ready to work with the bigger traditional distributors with their locked in schedules and other demanding requirements (minimum titles, hefty fees, etc). Itasca provides distribution and fulfillment services to these smaller indie publishers cost-effectively and “with no nickel-and-diming warehouse fees.”
So what do they do, exactly?
They warehouse publishers’ books and resell them to book resellers.
They do not have sales reps (unlike many other distributors). They claim to take the money that would have been spent on sales reps and put it toward “promoting the books and creating the consumer demand that actually sells books.”
Which, frankly, is kind of suspect because they go on to say that they’re still counting on the publisher itself to “generate consumer demand for the books” to make the orders from the book resellers flow (e.g., Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble and Amazon).
No demand, no flow.
They claim that “distributing through Itasca this way is much more effective than using the POD services, where sales are constricted by the reluctance of booksellers to order POD titles, which are available only on a nonreturnable basis.”
Itasca also specializes in “fulfillment,” by which they mean that they store publishers’ books and fulfull “orders that the publisher generates themselves via their website, selling as a merchant in online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, and selling at events or to organizations.”
They also sell publishers’ books directly from their website.
Publisher’s can also use Bookmobiles printing services in conjunction with their distribution and fulfillment services, and incur savings and efficiencies.
I can see Itasca working for select indie publishers, but not sure they’re quite right for Donovan Street Press. The lack of sales reps and dependence on the publisher generating interest gives me pause. Yes, the publisher must do their part to generate interest, but discoverability is a HUGE part of the problem, and I would like to think that the ideal distributor would help with that to a greater extent than I’m seeing with these folks, at first blush, at least.
Re-Creative: the Podcast
Season 3 of Re-Creative, a podcast about creativity and the works that inspire it, launched two days ago!
Our first episode featured a conversation with Ben Fox, the brains behind Shepherd, a book discovery site. Ben Fox is very much a fan of books.
In future episodes you’ll hear Mark Rayner and me talk to: John Scalzi, Michael Antman, Catherine Fitzsimmons, Candas Jane Dorsey, Ira Nayman, Blair Young, Bruce Sterling, Tom Bradley, Hugh Spencer, Jenn Thorson, Cathi Bond, and more.
You can also check out the first 2 seasons of Re-Creative, over 40 conversations with creative people from all walks of life about the art stoking their imaginative fires. From Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Beethoven, the movies Aliens and The Thing, pottery, a map of Paris and so much more, our often humorous chats with actors, writers, scholars, musicians, journalists (the list goes on) cover a wide range of territory.
Featured Book
"In dozens of amiable, frequently humorous vignettes... Mahoney fondly recalls his career as a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio technician in this memoir... amusing and highly informative."
— Kirkus Reviews
"What a wonderful book! If you love CBC Radio, you'll love Adventures in the Radio Trade. Joe Mahoney's honest, wise, and funny stories from his three decades in broadcasting make for absolutely delightful reading!
— Robert J. Sawyer, author of The Oppenheimer Alternative''
"No other book makes me love the CBC more."
— Gary Dunford, Page Six
Adventures in the Radio Trade documents a life in radio, largely at Canada's public broadcaster. It's for people who love CBC Radio, those interested in the history of Canadian Broadcasting, and for those who want to hear about close encounters with numerous luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, J. Michael Straczynski, Stuart McLean, Joni Mitchell, Peter Gzowski and more. And it's for people who want to know how to make radio.
Crafted with gentle humour and thoughtfulness, this is more than just a glimpse into the internal workings of CBC Radio. It's also a prose ode to the people and shows that make CBC Radio great.
Coming Soon
The Gates of Polished Horn by Mark A. Rayner.
Huey and the Wasteland by Matt Watts
Follow Joe Mahoney on Goodreads.
This has been the twenty-sixth edition of Assorted Nonsense, the official newsletter of Donovan Street Press Inc.