While I continue to wait for time and muse and energy and inspiration to write fresh material, let me share another old piece. This bit from a decade ago examines statistical quirks in The Price Is Right. Game shows offer a lot of material for probability questions. The specific numbers have changed since this was posted, but, the substance hasn’t. I got a bunch of essays out of one odd incident mentioned once on the show, and let me do something useful with that now.
To the serious game show fans: Yes, I am aware that the “Item Up For Bid” is properly called the “One-Bid”. I am writing for a popular audience. (The name “One-Bid” comes from the original, 1950s, run of the show, when the game was entirely about bidding for prizes. A prize might have several rounds of bidding, or might have just the one, and that format is the one used for the Item Up For Bid for the current, 1972-present, show.)
Putting together links to all my essays about trapezoid areas made me realize I also had a string of articles examining that problem of The Price Is Right, with Drew Carey’s claim that only once in the show’s history had all six contestants winning the Item Up For Bids come from the same seat in Contestants’ Row. As with the trapezoid pieces they form a more or less coherent whole, so, let me make it easy for people searching the web for the likelihood of clean sweeps or of perfect games on The Price Is Right to find my thoughts.
Continue reading “About Chances of Winning on The Price Is Right, Again”