ABSTRACT
A simple stay-switch probability game demonstrates the importance of empirically testing our beliefs. Based on intuition, most of Art Kohn’s undergraduate participants at North Carolina Central University believed that a stay strategy leads to a higher percentage of winning, and most faculty participants believed that staying and switching yielded equal probabilities of winning. A simple in-class demonstration proved that switching wins twice as often as staying, suggesting the importance of empirically validating our beliefs. A follow-up questionnaire indicated that participating in this experiment may increase students’trust in the empirical method.
