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.

  • wmassingham@lemmy.worldEnglish
    241·
    3 years ago

    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.

        • Jessica@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          3 years ago

          I tried for a few minutes, before my son got bored and wanted to move on 😜. If you do learn it, let us know!

          • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            1·
            3 years ago

            How old is your son? I imagine I’ll do the same, but this is the only magic trick that I’ve really wanted to learn. My son has some fine motor delays so he won’t be able to do this.

            I realized that I’ve interacted with you a few times here, so I ended up looking at your comment history. We seem to share a lot of similar characteristics.

            I noticed that you’re trans and had a Q&A. I’m cis-het and I missed that session. I hope that we’ll interact again. I want to understand T as well as I understand LGB. I just don’t know anyone T.

            • Jessica@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              1·
              3 years ago

              My boy is about 15 now. I miss the times when magic was, well, magic. I love the times we have now, and look forward to the future as well. But, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t miss my little boy.

              If you have any Q’s, ask away. I may do another AMA soon, for fun.

      • Veltoss@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        3 years ago

        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.

    • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      51·
      3 years ago

      I’m curious why you don’t think this is significant?

      This is a pretty high house edge (or whatever you want to call it) for a game that seems the most fair as possible.

      No casino games are that fair.

      As is discussed elsewhere in this thread, you could probably practice and get that higher.