Probably just the fairly self evident fact that nearly every pilot who has clocked up more than a few hundred hours is an aircraft owner.
Exactly. Again, it may be an irrelevant factor or a massive contributor. Who knows without more data and proper analysis.
abgd,
Sorry, you're absolutely right. I didn't mean that the killing zone is an exact parallel to the game show thing (I didn't realise it way Monte Hall, thank you), merely that it was an example of how stats are altered by each changing event. I think we're agreeing!
SDB73, There has been a fundamental change to the odds as you know with certainty that one empty box has been removed. Where is the flaw in my logic?
Box 57 and 100 (or more generically the box you chose originally and the final alternative) will have carried 50% probability from the start.
That's the bit that's flawed.
At the start, each box has a 1% chance of being selected by you. Which means that you have 1% chance of selecting box 57. Agreed?
If so, then no matter what happens after that, there is still only a 1% chance that the box you selected is a winning box. Because nothing can change the past. In the past you selected a box, and there is only a 1% chance that the box you selected was a winner. Agreed?
If so, when 98 empty boxes are then remove, there is STILL a 1% chance that the box you originally selected is a winner. If you disagree at this point, go back to the previous paragraph.
So, if you know for sure that there is only a 1% chance that the box you are currently selecting is a winner, and that there is only one other box remaining, AND (critically) that one of the two boxes is a winner, it is a concrete mathmatical / statistical fact that there is a 99% chance that the other box is a winner.
I hope this is clear now. and trust me, I sound clever now, but I argued 50/50 originally also, until it clicked.