That's the Big Monty Hall Book for those unfamiliar with the local slang. The review appeared in the May issue of The American Statistician, not freely available online, alas. The author was Michael Sherman of Texas A & M University. Here's the opening:
Jason Rosenhouse states on the last page of his book that he encountered much “incredulity” at writing a “whole book” on the “Monty Hall problem.” I confess that I was one of the incredulous upon picking up this book. After reading it, however, I have quite a different view.
And just what is this new view of which he speaks?
Rosenhouse is both entertaining and precise in his writing. He carefully makes the point that conditional probability is difficult to intuitively process, often because what is being conditioned on is not clear. The book is both informative and an entertaining journey for both those schooled in probability and those with little background in probability
Score! That last line is especially gratifying, since there were times when I was writing that I worried about having done exactly the opposite. That is, a book that was too technical for people not schooled in probability but not technical enough for those who were.
Physical Science
Comments
... there were times when I was writing that I worried about having done exactly the opposite.
Couldn't you have, like, calculated the probabilities?
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | August 12, 2010 5:59 PM
Ah, very clever: a post that hawks your commercial products (I saw that link you embeded up there: very subliminal) under the guise of post related to the insights into human nature gained by examining an interesting mathematical riddle.
But try to keep a low profile; you don't want to be the cause yet more of your sciblings moving elsewhere.
:-)
Posted by: Divalent | August 12, 2010 9:41 PM
Sweet! Congratulations! I trust the book isn't too strident, lest you turn people off about making choices.
Posted by: Jerry Coyne | August 13, 2010 9:13 AM
Well, I did work in a reference to Richard Dawkins. In some circles that's all it takes to be considered strident.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | August 13, 2010 3:37 PM
Jason, is there ever going to be a paperback edition?
Posted by: MKR | August 14, 2010 11:37 AM
MKR --
My understanding s that there will, eventually, be a paperback edition, but for now the hardcover edition continues to sell well. A paperback edition is not released until hardcover sales decline.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | August 14, 2010 1:22 PM