deal or no deal

[james.moughan at sunderland.ac.uk]

[snip]
>
> What I would really like to know, is how they calculate the offer.
> Obviously, they set the upper limit at the average of the still standing
> offers, but I wonder if and how they take subsequent rounds into
> consideration. Is there a "Monty Hall"
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem) type consideration
> that needs to be taken into effect as cases are eliminated?

I believe not; the Monty Hall problem is biased by the fact that the
presenter knows where the prize is, and eliminates one box accordingly.
 Where boxes are eliminated at random, it's impossible for any given
box to have a higher probability of containing any given amount of
money than another.  And for the contestants box to be worth more or
less than the mean, it must have a higher probability of containing a
certain amount.

Like another member of the group, I've seen them offer more than the
average on the UK version, which puzzled me quite a lot.

James M