151–160 of 193 posts
A classic example in the old PSSC high school physics curriculum was a little catapult-like device which tossed a coin, spinning it a few times in mid-air, and repeatably landing it on the same side. It's a demonstration that Newtonian physics is repeatable.
I learned a trick with flipping coins from a barber at my grandpas shop when I was probably 6 or 7. Since then I've always been able to flip a coin and determine what the outcome is. It's really just being consistent with the flip and the catch.
If this is done with a quick toss and the coin is flipping rapidly in the air, that's pretty impressive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah man, please use Bayesian statistics there... Well, the presenter says he doesn't know much about statistics.
The paper does use Bayesian statistics. Presenter is a pure maths PhD.
Hi, I'm the first author of the manuscript, so I thought I could answer some of the questions and clarify some issues (all details are in the manuscript, but who has the time to read it ;) Low RPM tosses: Most of the recordings are on crapy webcams with ~ 30FPS. The coin spin usually much faster than the sensor can record which results in often non-spinning-looking flips. Why did we take the videos in the first place…
Hi, I'm the first author of the manuscript, so I thought I could answer some of the questions and clarify some issues (all details are in the manuscript, but who has the time to read it ;) Low RPM tosses: Most of the recordings are on crapy webcams with ~ 30FPS. The coin spin usually much faster than the sensor can record which results in often non-spinning-looking flips. Why did we take the videos in the first place…
The NFL still flips coins professionally. I wonder if they have better-than-webcam footage of each flip. Somewhere out there a bookie might be very interested in any potential bias.
With how much money there is in sports betting, it could potentially be somewhat lucrative, though I wouldn't be surprised if the bias doesn't actually end up mattering that much in practice.
My heart goes out the cryptographers. All that code, written over decades, that assumes coin flips are 50:50. So much updating and rewriting to do. Quite a few algorithms that will need a rethink to remain fair.
Hi, I'm the first author of the manuscript, so I thought I could answer some of the questions and clarify some issues (all details are in the manuscript, but who has the time to read it ;) Low RPM tosses: Most of the recordings are on crapy webcams with ~ 30FPS. The coin spin usually much faster than the sensor can record which results in often non-spinning-looking flips. Why did we take the videos in the first place…
The NFL still flips coins professionally. I wonder if they have better-than-webcam footage of each flip. Somewhere out there a bookie might be very interested in any potential bias.
With our coins, the head (the Queen's face at the time) is pretty distinct with a large smooth area, compared to the rough feel of the platypus and water.
So if ever you're flipping for anything that matters, make sure the coin lands directly on the ground.
Easy way to get a fair result from an unfair coin toss: Flip the coin twice in a row, in this case starting with the same side facing up both times, so it's equally unfair for both tosses. If you get heads-heads or tails-tails, discard and start over until you get either heads-tails or tails-heads, which have equal probabilities (so you can say something like HT = "heads" and TH = "tails"). This works even if the coi…
If anyone wants to look up why this might work, it's a Whitening transform [0]. I can't find the name of the algorithm itself being describe in the parent but there's more than just that for accomplishing the same thing. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitening_transformation