Monty and the pigeon

I remember, back when Carolyn J. & I first started writing the original Kitchen Table Math, the Monty Hall problem coming up. I had never heard of it.

I think I remember, too, saying a couple of times, on the blog, that I came away from writing Animals in Translation thinking birds might just be as smart as people, or smarter. I didn't want to think that, particularly; How smart are birds, anyway? wasn't the topic of the book, which was mostly about mammals, not birds. But every time Temple told me a bird story, I would think hmmmmm.

The crow-and-the-rifle story, about a crow repeatedly taunting a rancher, has never left me.

So naturally, when I saw "Pigeons, Humans, and the Monty Hall Dilemma," I had to look.

The Monty Hall Dilemma is a probability puzzle that is notorious for eliciting suboptimal decisions from humans. A participant is given a choice from among three doors, one of which conceals a valuable prize. After an initial selection, one of the remaining, nonwinning doors is opened, and the participant is given a chance to switch to the other unopened door. The probability of winning is higher if the participant switches. Pigeons maximize their wins by switching on virtually all trials of a Monty Hall Dilemma analogue, whereas humans utilize a suboptimal strategy involving probability matching. Possible reasons for the difference between these two species’ performance are considered.

Pigeons, Humans, and the Monty Hall Dilemma by Walter T. Herbranson Current Directions in Psychological Science 2012 21: 297

No time to read or even skim --- but looking forward.

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from a longtime member of ktm, whose high school is as good as its ranking in U.S. News:

X. and I just returned from our local Barnes and Noble. Under a sign labeled "Required School Reading" were several copies of Animals in Translation. Other books on the table included For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Great Gatsby, Blink, Night, The Cannery, Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm, Romeo and Juliet (and lots more). We decided it was quite an honor to have one's book included with such famous titles.

I am thrilled!

Damar the starling bird

Cognition and Language Lab via Grrlscientist

I think I've mentioned a couple of times that I came out of Animals in Translation thinking if there is one critter as smart as people or smarter, it's birds. There might be others, of course. There might be lots of others. But birds were the ones that were hard to ignore.

Funny thing: The Birds was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid.