He says to you, “I’ve decided to give you some of my fortune. Do you see this bag? I have 5001 pearls inside it. 2501 of them are white, and 2500 of them are black. I’ll let you take out any number of pearls from the bag without looking. If you take out the same number of black and white pearls, I will reward you with a number of gold bars equivalent to the number of pearls you took.”
How many pearls should you take out to give yourself a good number of gold bars while still retaining a good chance of actually getting them?
Take out 5000 pearls. If the remaining pearl is white, then you’ve won 5000 gold bars!