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2024-11-11

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Coin flips don’t appear to have 50/50 odds after all (www.engadget.com)

submitted 1 year ago by ooli to c/science

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[+] Madison420 -12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean yeah they're different weights on each side. Sand one side, Polish the other and flip them in a vacuum.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The article mentions that's irrelevant. It's slightly biased towards the side it started on, no matter if it's heads of tails.

[–] Madison420 -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I mentioned it because as far as I saw they did not specify what coin they used.

I should be specific, they say 4⁰ someodd coins but don't mention a control coin or the effect of air.

[–] demonsword 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I mentioned it because as far as I saw they did not specify what coin they used.

You haven't actually read the article, have you?

(...) the authors of the new paper conducted 350,757 flips, using different coins from 46 global currencies to eliminate a heads-tail bias between coin designs. (They also used a variety of people to rule out individuals with biased flipping techniques corrupting the results.) Regardless of the coin type, the same-side outcome could be predicted at 0.508, which rounds up perfectly to Diaconis’ “about 51 percent” prediction from 16 years ago.

[–] Madison420 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I should be specific, they say 4⁰ someodd coins but don't mention a control coin or the effect of air.

You should probably reign in that snark as i specifically addressed your point.

Notably every coin has a face/tail bias because of how much material is removed for the design, a coin with no bias flipped in vacuum should have been the control to remove the design and/or air resistance.