this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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144
"Fair" coin flips appear to not be all that fair (arxiv.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by PetDinosaurs to c/technology
42 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The paper shows some significant evidence that human coin flips are not as fair as I would have expected (plus probably a bunch of people would agree with me). There's always some probability that this happened by chance, but this is pretty low.

Of course, we should be able to build a really accurate coin flipping machine, but I never would have expected such a bias for human flippers.

This is why science is awesome and challenging your ideas is important.

Edit: hopefully this is not too wrong a place, but Lemmy is small, and I didn't know where else I could share such an exciting finding.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I remember it feeling this way as a kid. That coins tend to land on the same side they start on.

[–] PetDinosaurs 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

No! Bad treefrog.

If it "feels like" something, you're probably fooling yourself.

Hard evidence. The easiest person to fool is yourself.

Edit: people, please don't down vote treefrog. They are learning, and I am joking.

Be nice. This place is way toxic. I'm not sure how much more I can handle it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I read the beginning of the article. It confirmed my gut feeling. But I certainly didn't run 300k coin flips to check lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Jokes on me! I doubt most of my decisions and the logic that lead up to them!

Evidenced based research ftw, though.

[–] PetDinosaurs -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you're still young, careful about too much imposter syndrome.

It took me until some reasonably extreme events for me to acknowledge that I was smart.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m being a bit facetious. It took me quite a while, and with the help of my best friend, to realize I am smart. I don’t like to say that sort of thing. I am smart when it comes to the things that I know well, but am clueless on so much else.

[–] PetDinosaurs 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly.

Just making sure.

I had a lot of trouble gathering that confidence as well until I got into industry.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm with you, i used to try influence what i wanted by catching it.

If i wanted what i had flipped from i caught it palm up and then revealed. If i wanted the opposite i caught it and then revealed it onto my other hand.

As i got older i wouldn't let people catch the coin only let it hit the ground and bounce around.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I remember the opposite: heads always felt like "right way up" to us, but the result was almost always tails no matter who flipped it. To the extent that it still feels like the heads/tails percentage is the only positive version of the 50-50-90 rule, and I will never choose anything else.

Probably confirmation bias. But I wonder if the people in my family are wobblier than others.