this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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127
"Fair" coin flips appear to not be all that fair (arxiv.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] ericbomb@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Now I wanna know if I can get better at landing on the same side on purpose...

[–] nous@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I suspect you can, if there is a bias when no effort is applied I suspect you can train to increase it. I can think of two main factors at play - how fast the coin is rotating and how long it remains in the air. Both of which are under your control and I suspect you can train to become more reliable for though it might take a lot of effort. Or you can just learn to do this in 10 mins. Who is going to know the difference? It is cheating either way.

[–] SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Great minds think alike! I just referenced this video in another thread on this post, without having read your comment first!

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