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WATCH: Study indicates coin flips are not exactly 50/50

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Published in Weird News

(UPI) A team of researchers analyzed the results of 350,757 coin tosses to determine whether the results are truly 50/50, and found "fair" coins are slightly more likely to land the same way they started.

František Bartoš, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam, led a team that analyzed the results of 350,757 coin flips from 48 people using 46 currencies.

"We found overwhelming evidence for a 'same-side' bias predicted by Diaconis and colleagues in 2007: If you start heads-up, the coin is more likely to land heads-up and vice versa," Bartoš wrote in sharing his results on social media.

He said his team found that coins flipped into the air and caught in the hand had a 50.8% chance of landing on the same side they started from.

The study, titled "Fair coins tend to land on the same side they started: Evidence from 350,757 flips," was published online.

 

"If you bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss (i.e., paying 1 dollar to enter, and winning either 0 or 2 dollars depending on the outcome) and repeat the bet 1,000 times, knowing the starting position of the coin toss would earn you 19 dollars on average," the researchers wrote.

"This is more than the casino advantage for six-deck blackjack against an optimal-strategy player, where the casino would make $5 on a comparable bet, but less than the casino advantage for single-zero roulette, where the casino would make $27 on average," the paper states.

Bartoš said his team also found the odds varied slightly from flipper to flipper, with some coin flippers showing a clear bias toward same-side landings and others showing no bias at all. He said this can be explained by slight variations in flipping techniques.


Copyright 2024 by United Press International

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