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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[–] wmassingham@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago (16 children)

tl;dr:

The standard model of coin flipping was extended by Persi Diaconis [12] who proposed that when people flip a ordinary coin, they introduce a small degree of ‘precession’ or wobble—a change in the direction of the axis of rotation throughout the coin’s trajectory. According to the Diaconis model, precession causes the coin to spend more time in the air with the initial side facing up. Consequently, the coin has a higher chance of landing on the same side as it started (i.e., ‘same-side bias’).

"Higher chance" being 50.77% to land on the same side it started from. But this varies by person; apparently some people introduce more precession than others. But even if you could figure out how to do it reliably, I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

[–] SayJess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 42 points 1 year ago (7 children)

The illusion of a coin flipping in the air allows those that have mastered the act to get near 100% precision.

[–] Veltoss@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Crazy how simple and obvious that seems after you see it, but I never would have suspected it if someone did it right in front of me.

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