Steve Selvin, the UC Berkeley Statistician Who First Posed the Monty Hall Problem, Dies at 85

Steve Selvin, an emeritus professor of biostatistics at UC Berkeley who first posed and solved the famous Monty Hall problem, died Sept. 30, 2026, in Oakland, The Daily Californian and the UC Berkeley School of Public Health reported. He was 85.

The puzzle

In 1975, Selvin sent a letter to the editor of The American Statistician that described and solved the problem, named for the host of the game show “Let’s Make a Deal.” A contestant picks one of three doors, one hiding a prize. The host, who knows where the prize is, opens another door to show nothing. Should the contestant switch? Selvin showed that switching wins two-thirds of the time, while staying wins one-third of the time, the School of Public Health said. The puzzle went on to appear in many introductory probability and statistics classes and textbooks.

“It’s a brilliant way to understand concepts of conditional probability,” colleague Alan Hubbard, a professor of biostatistics, told The Daily Californian.

A Berkeley kid

Selvin grew up in Berkeley. As a 12-year-old, he sold game-day programs at California Memorial Stadium, and he went to Berkeley High before attending UC Riverside, the Daily Cal reported. He earned his doctorate in biostatistics at Berkeley in 1970 and joined the School of Public Health faculty in 1972. He became chair of the Biostatistics Division in 1977.

The school said he helped build its undergraduate program and its MPH in epidemiology and biostatistics. He wrote ten books, including “The Joy of Statistics,” and worked on topics from cancer clustering to perinatal epidemiology. For decades he taught an 8 a.m. introductory medical statistics course. He won the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award in 1983, and in 2011 he received the Berkeley Citation.

“He made it fun for the students. He was loved by the students,” longtime friend and colleague Nicholas Jewell told the Daily Cal.

Selvin is survived by his wife of 60 years, the sculptor Nancy Selvin; his daughter, Elizabeth Selvin, an epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins; and two grandchildren, according to the school. UC Berkeley has set up the Steve Selvin Scholarship Fund to support biostatistics students.