Monday, February 2, 2015

BEATING THE ODDS AT COIN-FLIPPING

With most coins, if you flip them, you will have a slightly better chance of getting tails than heads.  This is because coins usually have a bust or portrait on the obverse which makes that side a wee bit heavier than the weight provided by the design on the reverse.  If you were to flip a U.S. penny (the kind with the Lincoln Memorial on the back) 1,000 times, it would probably come up heads about 495 times and tails 505.

2 comments:

Leslie said...

Wha???! Everything they ever taught us about probability in math at school was wrong?!

Henry said...

I can't believe that anything taught in school could possibly be wrong.