The Price is Right winner and cancer survivor calculates the odds

Elisa Long, a professor in Decisions, Operations, and Technology Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, was diagnosed with breast cancer. The Price is Right films a breast cancer awareness episode every August. Long wanted to get on that show. So she watched episodes during her 6-hour chemotherapy sessions to familiarize herself with games and rules, and most importantly, to maximize her odds of winning.

Long describes her thought process and probability calculations on her way to surviving cancer and winning it all on The Price is Right.

My goal in going on “The Price Is Right” was to play the best I possibly could given tremendous uncertainty about the outcome. The same was true for my breast cancer. The stakes were just higher.

Ah, the uncertainty of life.