5 ms·
A fair coin has a roughly 51% chance of landing with the same side up as it started with. See the paper by Diaconis et al. "Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss."
by splat 17y ago
A fair coin has a roughly 51% chance of landing with the same side up as it started with. See the paper by Diaconis et al. "Dynamical Bias in the Coin Toss."
- req2 17y agoA fair coin is one on which p = 0.5. A coin that has a 51% chance is clearly not a fair coin. This isn't even what I was talking about, but is still equally easy to turn into a fair coin. In this case, caller calls in the air after flipper hides the side that starts up. 0.5 * 0.51 + 0.5 * 0.49 = 0.5 For any other case, flip a coin twice. Assign one person HT and the other person TH, reflipping TT and HH. Since p * (1 - p) = (1 - p) * p, the dual flip is a fair flip. Please don't mention the possibility of sleight of hand next.