Soldato
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Psycho Sonny said:
See but you didn't *flip* the coin, so it had little/no sideways momentum, that's the major problem.
What’s the probability of a coin landing on its side?
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See but you didn't *flip* the coin, so it had little/no sideways momentum, that's the major problem.
Caporegime
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Mohinder said:
well if you have to flip it then the chances of it landing on the side is zero simple as
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Psycho Sonny said:
why zero? aslong as the side faces the deck it has a chance and flipping a coin the side does face the deck so it has to be possible.
Soldato
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Also, the fact that it's fatter means it's inherently more stable and it also has a much lower centre of mavity.Mohinder said:
Soldato
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Which isn't zerovonhelmet said:
Before it's asked, the answer is yes, it doesvonhelmet said:
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I consider the question asked in the OP to be fairly dull, but here's something that's maybe more interesting.
While googling for any statistics about coins landing on their sides, I came across a research paper by two guys who purported to show (using mechanical arguments) that a flipped coin has approximately a 51% chance of landing the same way as it was when you flipped it.
Curious to see whether I could confirm this by experiment, I started flipping a 2p coin with my thumb, then catching it with the same hand and slamming it down on the back of my opposite hand. I always started the coin heads up, and I recorded whether it came up heads or tails.
I got bored after 100 flips, so my data set is small, but I recorded 61 occurences of heads and only 39 of tails. Assuming that there's a 50/50 chance of either H or T, then there's approximately a 1.76% chance of getting 61 or more heads out of 100 flips. So was my experiment mere statistical anomaly, or do I really have a technique of flipping coins that makes it significantly more likely to land the same way up as it started? If the latter, I foresee a devious profit-making opportunity...
While googling for any statistics about coins landing on their sides, I came across a research paper by two guys who purported to show (using mechanical arguments) that a flipped coin has approximately a 51% chance of landing the same way as it was when you flipped it.
Curious to see whether I could confirm this by experiment, I started flipping a 2p coin with my thumb, then catching it with the same hand and slamming it down on the back of my opposite hand. I always started the coin heads up, and I recorded whether it came up heads or tails.
I got bored after 100 flips, so my data set is small, but I recorded 61 occurences of heads and only 39 of tails. Assuming that there's a 50/50 chance of either H or T, then there's approximately a 1.76% chance of getting 61 or more heads out of 100 flips. So was my experiment mere statistical anomaly, or do I really have a technique of flipping coins that makes it significantly more likely to land the same way up as it started? If the latter, I foresee a devious profit-making opportunity...
