2 ms·
> you would have to be crazy to select a uniform distribution unless it was shaped like a sphere. The distribution for a coin is uniform over the event space [
by khafra 13y ago
> you would have to be crazy to select a uniform distribution unless it was shaped like a sphere.
The distribution for a coin is uniform over the event space [heads,tails]; not over the angle of rotation it lands on. You can have continuous or discrete event spaces.
- bjterry 13y agoSure. My point was that you can't physically construct a flat cylinder a couple centimeters across that you can flip fairly and achieve a 98% bias. And if you don't meet those physical requirements, it's not a coin. If you had a sphere shaped object and the head condition was a particular point being above the equator, maybe you could include some distribution of internal weighting that could achieve that level of bias. But really the sphere thing was just tongue-in-cheek. If you have something shaped like a gömböc[1] you can have a "coin" that lands on heads ~100% of the time, except for the whole not-actually-being-a-coin part. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6mb%C3%B6c https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6mb%C3%B6c