Are Birds Smarter Than Mathematicians?”

Birds perform better on the Monty Hall dilemmal than humans, according to researchers at Whitman College. Their study is summarized in the Journal of Comparative Psychology in an article titled Are Birds Smarter Than Mathematicians?”

People do badly on the problem around the world. When it appeared in the "Ask Marilyn" column published in Parade magazine, 92% of the 10,000 letters in response disagreed with her solution.

But in the experiments, pigeons quickly reached the best strategy for the Monty Hall problem.

The researchers speculate that birds are more likely use empirical probability to solve the Monty Hall problem. In empirical probability, one makes predictions after tracking outcomes over time. Humans, on the other hand, tend to go with classical probability in which one tries to figure out every possible outcome and make predictions without collecting data. Our way of tackling probability-based problems generally work pretty well for us but the Monty Hall dilemma being one notable exception. Our dependence on visual information to quickly make sense of the world can make us more vulnerable to visual illusions.

Stephen Goforth