The Envelope You Already Opened
A dealer picks an amount uniformly from , puts into one envelope and into the other, seals both, and hands you one at random. You open yours and find .
(a) Should you swap? (b) Work out the right policy for every amount you might have seen. (c) A colleague argues: "whatever is in your envelope, the other holds either double or half with equal chance, so swapping is worth -- always swap, and swap again forever." Where exactly does that break, and how much is your correct policy actually worth?
Answer
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