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05/27/2005 Archived Entry: "Gordon on coin tosses"

Trivia for the day: Gordon P. asks, "How fair is a coin toss...really?"

Just stumbled across some work done last year that found that "coin tosses" actually have a very subtle sort of "house odds:" The usual "flip-catch-slap" procedure has about a 51% chance of ending with the same side up as was initially facing up before the flip. Click here and here.

It's unlikely that this bias could easily be used to someone's advantage, however, since the initial side up is the "flipper's" choice, whereas which side gets "called" is the "caller's" choice. Hence, unless the "flipper" and "caller" are in collusion, or both have a strong preference for a particular side of the coin, the bias won't show up in practice --- as is indeed suggested by the fact that it was not noticed until just last year... :-/