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.

  • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    72·
    1 year 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.

    • beeng@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Where are coins flipped multiple times in order to gain such value from doing so? I can only think of 2up being played in Australia, 1 day per year and they don’t flick it with their thumb, so…

      Where is the “house” gaining so much?

      • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        67·
        1 year ago

        You can bet on dice and coin flips.

        “I bet you a dollar that my coin flip will come up heads?”

        This research suggests that this is not only profitable, but can be improved upon.

        Edit: so weird. Why would such a simple and correct statement be controversial? I would’ve thought that betting on heads or tails was not this far out of fair coin odds.

        • Snowplow8861English
          31·
          1 year ago

          I think the question is, where can you bet on a single coin flip? Maybe because I’m Australian, there’s only one day a year you can bet on a (two) coin flip legally here. Everyone else seems to generally understand that coin flips aren’t fair for gambling and therefore is illegal.

          If this paper was like ‘this is how corruption in sports…’ rather than ‘this is like that magician cup and balls trick’ then I’d understand your concern.

          But like you said, you don’t even have a coin in the house, so the practical side is day to day, perhaps not even once a year, not only are you not deciding on a coin flip, even if you were, you’d (or whomever was flipping it for you) have to learn a technique to see it affect you.

          • PetDinosaurs@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Aside from National Lampoon Vegas Vacation, it would be in back alleys. It’s not a commercial game because it’s not exciting enough and it would be easy enough to fool with a machine (also the paper at hand). I just didn’t expect it to be so biased for actual people flipping coins.

            I seem to have confused people. I just thought there was a different understanding and didn’t want to explain gambling.

            What I meant to express in “the house always wins” is that in games of chance, you’re always at a disadvantage. That’s how the house is statistically guaranteed to make money when played at a large scale.

            Roulette has red, black, and the green one.

            A “fair coin” is a mathematical abstraction. There’s zero probability that actual coin flips are “fair”, in the mathematical sense. What I was expressing was the fact that this is way larger of an effect than I expected and, over time, this effect will change things that use coin flips.

            • Snowplow8861English
              1·
              1 year ago

              To be honest I think we have different cultural values here. The way I read this and the way you read it is clearly different. I’m disappointed by how little I had my expectations changed, while you had them moved more.