Fifty percent Heads, fifty percent Tails? Apparently not.
Some scientists, Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes, and Richard Montgomery have done a huge amount of research into this subject and here are the main findings.
- If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched. (If it starts out as heads, there’s a 51% chance it will end as heads).
- If the coin is spun, rather than tossed, it can have a much-larger-than-50% chance of ending with the heavier side down. Spun coins can exhibit “huge bias” (some spun coins will fall tails-up 80% of the time).
- If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor, this probably adds randomness.
- If the coin is tossed and allowed to clatter to the floor where it spins, as will sometimes happen, the above spinning bias probably comes into play.
- A coin will land on its edge around 1 in 6000 throws, creating a flipistic singularity.
- The same initial coin-flipping conditions produce the same coin flip result. That is, there’s a certain amount of determinism to the coin flip.
- A more robust coin toss (more revolutions) decreases the bias.
Here is the “Coding the Wheel” article on the report. Not sure what this has got to do with things but thought you might like to know for when you next flip…
