Poll of the Day > How does probability work in this case?

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Im watching masterchef and there are 15 chefs, only 5 can advance.

so each chef has a 1 in 3 chance of advancing right?

im guessing probability doesnt take into account the relative skill of each chef. So if one chef is a head chef in a Michelin star restaurant, his 1 in 3 chance of advancing goes up right? How would you take that into account?

could you even

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Chance of progression is the same as 1 - (not progressing).

If five are chosen with equal probability, from the perspective of any chef, the chances they aren't picked as one of those five would be:

(1415)(1314)(1213)(1112)(1011)

Which equals 2/3 chance of not progressing.

If you give each chef a numeric score, then you get a weighted sample for each chef with their score / (sum of scores). You then do the same as above, but recalculate based on the weighted probabilities instead of the identical probabilities.


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that's not a probability problem since there's no randomization involved.

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If it's truly random, yeah, it'd be 1/3.

In practice, you can predict with a little more sophistication than that by looking at each chef's skill, as you said, but determining how the odds play out would require substantially more data collection. Mostly, you'd have to set up a bunch of different variables to look out for (such as running a Michelin star restaurant), then watch as many other episodes as possible to see how frequently people with those variables advance. From there, you could use that experimental data to make more nuanced predictions.

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