Don't sweat the flip Mike!
I think more importantly Mike.....you best focus on your break and your'e racking skills
I think more importantly Mike.....you best focus on your break and your'e racking skills
Coin Flip Odds
- Thread starter StevenPWaldon
- Start date
One other possibility...
...what if coin flips aren't 50/50? I'm not rehashing my last post, in case you're wondering. In all seriosity, I saw this episode of the Twilight Zone where a man bought a newspaper and tossed a coin in a box to pay for it (this is back in the day, when people did such things on the street). BUT GET THIS... the coin landed ON ITS SIDE! (OMG I KNOW!)
This man was worked at a bank, and could read the minds of those around him. It got him into trouble, but that's a long story. The important thing is that he could READ MINDS.
So I mean, what if we're going about this all wrong? Maybe I should try and land the coin on its side so I can hear the thoughts of others.
...what if coin flips aren't 50/50? I'm not rehashing my last post, in case you're wondering. In all seriosity, I saw this episode of the Twilight Zone where a man bought a newspaper and tossed a coin in a box to pay for it (this is back in the day, when people did such things on the street). BUT GET THIS... the coin landed ON ITS SIDE! (OMG I KNOW!)
This man was worked at a bank, and could read the minds of those around him. It got him into trouble, but that's a long story. The important thing is that he could READ MINDS.
So I mean, what if we're going about this all wrong? Maybe I should try and land the coin on its side so I can hear the thoughts of others.
StevenPWaldon said:
You are now talking about a bias. If a bias exists then each flip will be subject to the bias, say odds are 60/40 heads/tails. Even with this in effect, past flips don't influence future flips. In reality if you have watched a coin flip result in 10 heads in a row, it would probably make sense to assume a bias and guess heads on the next flip. Now...I need a drink !!
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I checked PMs. No notice of Chuck. Really--don't tease me like this. I won't be able to sleep.
gwjackal said:
i hear ya!! i always tell people i know the flip is a 50/50 chance...but ive lost soooo many over the years i put my odds at 90/10 against me...but ive lost so many since then ive adusted it to 95/5 against me!!!! by the way..i always call heads..havnt called tails in 20 years at least!! i know it cant hurt to call tails but im one of them superstitious people! it cant get any worse i know but its just one of those things....StevenPWaldon said:
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no it wouldn't....
it wouldn't because you are basing it on the assumption of what is unknown. You can't know, without knowing all possible influences whether or not there is an outside influence that is causing a specific outcome, i.e. ten heads in a row, therefore, you are basing the probability on a false assumption, (that the coin flip is 50/50), and if you accept the premise that the coinflip is truly 50/50 then it is statistically predictable more accurate than 50% what the next outcome is; however, you can't actually know because statistics are an idea and don't actually predict anything in reality. They seem to only because we want them to and any abberations are ignored because of the acceptance of the paradigm..
So, in conclusion, if you state that there is a 50/50 chance that it will land heads or tails and you accept that premise, then my premise that I can predict with greater than 50% liklihood the outcome of the next flip if a certain number of flips and results are known is logically valid, even though it may not pan out with reality. it doesn't matter that there is no physical causation for the a change in the future results because we are speaking from a point of non knowledge to begin with, with the premise that the flip is actually 50/50.
Jaden
punter said:
it wouldn't because you are basing it on the assumption of what is unknown. You can't know, without knowing all possible influences whether or not there is an outside influence that is causing a specific outcome, i.e. ten heads in a row, therefore, you are basing the probability on a false assumption, (that the coin flip is 50/50), and if you accept the premise that the coinflip is truly 50/50 then it is statistically predictable more accurate than 50% what the next outcome is; however, you can't actually know because statistics are an idea and don't actually predict anything in reality. They seem to only because we want them to and any abberations are ignored because of the acceptance of the paradigm..
So, in conclusion, if you state that there is a 50/50 chance that it will land heads or tails and you accept that premise, then my premise that I can predict with greater than 50% liklihood the outcome of the next flip if a certain number of flips and results are known is logically valid, even though it may not pan out with reality. it doesn't matter that there is no physical causation for the a change in the future results because we are speaking from a point of non knowledge to begin with, with the premise that the flip is actually 50/50.
Jaden
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Interesting excerpt from an online article I found, "Lifelong debunker takes on arbiter of neutral choices":
(full article at: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/june9/diaconis-69.html)
"Of flipping coins and falling cats
It wasn't long before the unmanageable analysis of a bouncing, rolling die morphed into a somewhat easier one -- the study of a flipped coin. Diaconis started by showing that the outcome of a coin toss depends not on chance but physics.
"If you hit a coin with the same force in the same place, it always does the same thing," he says.
To make his point, Diaconis commissioned a team of Harvard technicians to build a mechanical coin tosser -- a 3-pound, 15-inch-wide contraption that, when bolted to a table, launches a coin into the air such that it lands the same way every single time. Diaconis himself has trained his thumb to flip a coin and make it come up heads 10 out of 10 times. But what he really wanted to know was whether unrehearsed tosses -- by ordinary folk who flip coins with unpredictable speeds and heights and catch them at different angles -- would show that the outcome of the act was, in fact, random.
To analyze the motion of a tossed coin, Diaconis solicited help from Richard Montgomery, a math professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Montgomery had developed the Falling Cat Theorem -- a theory that explains how a cat dropped from any angle always manages to land on its feet. Surely this expertise in angular momentum could also apply to falling coins, Diaconis thought. Staring at a picture of tumbling felines on Montgomery's office wall a few years ago, he blurted, "You're the man for me."
A collaboration was born. Diaconis and Montgomery started meeting once a week, at Stanford or UC-Santa Cruz, to discuss their ideas. In about eight months, they arrived at a startling prediction: A flipped coin is biased to land on the same side it starts out on.
But their pencil-and-paper model couldn't predict the size of the bias. And if the bias turned out so small that it would take, say, 10 million tosses to detect a heads advantage, the pages of yellow pad calculations would prove, for all practical purposes, meaningless. Determining the size of the bias would require watching real people flip real coins. To model a flipped coin with quantitative precision, they needed to analyze its spinning, spiraling motion at multiple, consecutive points along its trajectory. This task called for a camera capable of capturing, in many frames, a split-second event.
Diaconis first approached statistics Associate Professor Susan Holmes, who is also his wife, and asked if he could try her computer's camera. The resolution was too low. Diaconis and Holmes went out and bought a slow-motion camera. Still too low. They tried physics Professor Aharon Kapitulnik's slow-motion camera. Not good enough. "
(full article at: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/june9/diaconis-69.html)
"Of flipping coins and falling cats
It wasn't long before the unmanageable analysis of a bouncing, rolling die morphed into a somewhat easier one -- the study of a flipped coin. Diaconis started by showing that the outcome of a coin toss depends not on chance but physics.
"If you hit a coin with the same force in the same place, it always does the same thing," he says.
To make his point, Diaconis commissioned a team of Harvard technicians to build a mechanical coin tosser -- a 3-pound, 15-inch-wide contraption that, when bolted to a table, launches a coin into the air such that it lands the same way every single time. Diaconis himself has trained his thumb to flip a coin and make it come up heads 10 out of 10 times. But what he really wanted to know was whether unrehearsed tosses -- by ordinary folk who flip coins with unpredictable speeds and heights and catch them at different angles -- would show that the outcome of the act was, in fact, random.
To analyze the motion of a tossed coin, Diaconis solicited help from Richard Montgomery, a math professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Montgomery had developed the Falling Cat Theorem -- a theory that explains how a cat dropped from any angle always manages to land on its feet. Surely this expertise in angular momentum could also apply to falling coins, Diaconis thought. Staring at a picture of tumbling felines on Montgomery's office wall a few years ago, he blurted, "You're the man for me."
A collaboration was born. Diaconis and Montgomery started meeting once a week, at Stanford or UC-Santa Cruz, to discuss their ideas. In about eight months, they arrived at a startling prediction: A flipped coin is biased to land on the same side it starts out on.
But their pencil-and-paper model couldn't predict the size of the bias. And if the bias turned out so small that it would take, say, 10 million tosses to detect a heads advantage, the pages of yellow pad calculations would prove, for all practical purposes, meaningless. Determining the size of the bias would require watching real people flip real coins. To model a flipped coin with quantitative precision, they needed to analyze its spinning, spiraling motion at multiple, consecutive points along its trajectory. This task called for a camera capable of capturing, in many frames, a split-second event.
Diaconis first approached statistics Associate Professor Susan Holmes, who is also his wife, and asked if he could try her computer's camera. The resolution was too low. Diaconis and Holmes went out and bought a slow-motion camera. Still too low. They tried physics Professor Aharon Kapitulnik's slow-motion camera. Not good enough. "
I don't know if you're more stupid to not call tails (finally!), or if I'd be more stupid to suggest calling tails, which would only certainly mean that your next coin flip would land up heads. We're cursed.
....where's that Chuck Norris coin!?
....where's that Chuck Norris coin!?
deadwhak said:
Jaden's assertion comes from the basis that he stated earlier (before his misaligned blackjack analogy).
He stated: "Also statistically, in the long hall if you flip the coin 10,000 times there will be a 99.9 percent chance that there will be between 4950-5050 heads or tails. so if after 7000 flips you have 2500 heads, then statistically there is a greater liklihood that it will be heads on any given flip until it gets closer to even. If you've only flipped the coin ten times the chances are less but they are still greater to hit the opposite of whichever is in the lead."
There's only one thing that can reconcile the two competing (and brilliant) AZB sides here: if in Jaden's situation I were the one to call a certain side, the coin would undoubtedly land opposite to what I called.
So to sum this up:
.....
He stated: "Also statistically, in the long hall if you flip the coin 10,000 times there will be a 99.9 percent chance that there will be between 4950-5050 heads or tails. so if after 7000 flips you have 2500 heads, then statistically there is a greater liklihood that it will be heads on any given flip until it gets closer to even. If you've only flipped the coin ten times the chances are less but they are still greater to hit the opposite of whichever is in the lead."
There's only one thing that can reconcile the two competing (and brilliant) AZB sides here: if in Jaden's situation I were the one to call a certain side, the coin would undoubtedly land opposite to what I called.
So to sum this up:
.....
punter said:
I am pulling your leg but I am not....
I know that the accepted paradigm is that there is always a 50% chance, but I am trying to elicit some higher level thought here.
In reality, there is not a 50 percent chance that it will land heads or tails, even with all kidding aside about the chances of it landing on it's side. Seriously, the chances are only 50% in your head. It is an abstract concept that the coin flip is random. IT ISN'T. But since we are dealing with an unsubstantiated premise that the coinflip is 50%, then my argument is valid. It is valid because it TOO is an unsubstantiated premise but it is logically sound. Again, the reality of each coinflip not having a REAL influence on the outcome of the next flip is moot, because we are dealing with an abstract thought or premise that the coinflip is 50%. I can use the same argument that the coinflip isn't truly random to throw your premise that it is 50% out the window, so you can't use the argument that there is no future influence.
Without that argument, can you discount the predictibility of future tosses?
The answer is, no you can't. So we are stuck, you are right and wrong, as am I. It is not 50% but if we accept that it is as a given, then my premise that I can more accurately predict the next outcome with knowledge of prior outcomes is logically sound and valid.
Jaden
punter said:
I know that the accepted paradigm is that there is always a 50% chance, but I am trying to elicit some higher level thought here.
In reality, there is not a 50 percent chance that it will land heads or tails, even with all kidding aside about the chances of it landing on it's side. Seriously, the chances are only 50% in your head. It is an abstract concept that the coin flip is random. IT ISN'T. But since we are dealing with an unsubstantiated premise that the coinflip is 50%, then my argument is valid. It is valid because it TOO is an unsubstantiated premise but it is logically sound. Again, the reality of each coinflip not having a REAL influence on the outcome of the next flip is moot, because we are dealing with an abstract thought or premise that the coinflip is 50%. I can use the same argument that the coinflip isn't truly random to throw your premise that it is 50% out the window, so you can't use the argument that there is no future influence.
Without that argument, can you discount the predictibility of future tosses?
The answer is, no you can't. So we are stuck, you are right and wrong, as am I. It is not 50% but if we accept that it is as a given, then my premise that I can more accurately predict the next outcome with knowledge of prior outcomes is logically sound and valid.
Jaden
Here is how you control the coin flip. You toss it. Preactice tossing it at a certain speed, much like a juggler. You can count and influence the rotation amount, to a pretty close estimation of how it flips. Practice for a long time, you should be able to increase the 50% odds by a bit. Enough to bet on it for a while and come out ahead.
I tried this a while back, I got it so if I toss it about 6 inches up, I got it correct about 70% of the time. The bounce when it lands is a bit unpredictable still.
I tried this a while back, I got it so if I toss it about 6 inches up, I got it correct about 70% of the time. The bounce when it lands is a bit unpredictable still.
How I got around the bounce....
When I needed money in high school, I would play quarters with someone, you both flip if you match the others flip you win his quarter. We would alternate who flipped first and I would have us both flip onto a plastic binder or a school book and the quarter would usually stop dead when it struck.
I got between 85-95% accurate when I was in high school fifteen years ago almost..... geez I'm starting to get old.
Jaden
hang-the-9 said:
When I needed money in high school, I would play quarters with someone, you both flip if you match the others flip you win his quarter. We would alternate who flipped first and I would have us both flip onto a plastic binder or a school book and the quarter would usually stop dead when it struck.
I got between 85-95% accurate when I was in high school fifteen years ago almost..... geez I'm starting to get old.
Jaden
I can't help but jumping in this one. Just a few thoughts:
1) Jaden is actually on the right track. It can't be a "truly random" act with any fixed odds , primarily due to the chaos theory.
(Check out U of MI supercomputing results for actual odds in a controlled environment)
2) Scientifically, forecasting the results of flipping a coin has never been and never will be a 50% proposition. "It's 50/50" is not accurate. The 2 main contributors to this are A) the weight of the sides are not even and B) stopping on it's side is a possibility. (Check out the inclusion-exclusion principle for late-night reading.)
3) Whether it's 10 heads in a row, or 7500 out of 10,000, those are still very small numbers. In theory, you could watch a coin land on heads 1000 times in a row, without any bias in the coin, flip or landing surface. True mathematical odds are governed by the "Law of Large Numbers"; it may take 10 billion flips for the true odds to be realized - well beyond our ability of comprehension, tracking or memory. This is built into Kolmogorovs axioms (more good reading) and is why Casinos never lose in the long run.
But to the OP, it's probably more about your energy (metaphysically) than it is any axiom of probability.
(Jeez, no more late coffee for me) 
-von
1) Jaden is actually on the right track. It can't be a "truly random" act with any fixed odds , primarily due to the chaos theory.
(Check out U of MI supercomputing results for actual odds in a controlled environment)
2) Scientifically, forecasting the results of flipping a coin has never been and never will be a 50% proposition. "It's 50/50" is not accurate. The 2 main contributors to this are A) the weight of the sides are not even and B) stopping on it's side is a possibility. (Check out the inclusion-exclusion principle for late-night reading.)
3) Whether it's 10 heads in a row, or 7500 out of 10,000, those are still very small numbers. In theory, you could watch a coin land on heads 1000 times in a row, without any bias in the coin, flip or landing surface. True mathematical odds are governed by the "Law of Large Numbers"; it may take 10 billion flips for the true odds to be realized - well beyond our ability of comprehension, tracking or memory. This is built into Kolmogorovs axioms (more good reading) and is why Casinos never lose in the long run.
But to the OP, it's probably more about your energy (metaphysically) than it is any axiom of probability.
(Jeez, no more late coffee for me)
-von
Jaden said:
Assuming a 50/50 probability for heads/tails on each flip:
Misconceptions About Probability
"If a coin is flipped once and it lands heads up, does that mean it will land tails up next time? Certainly not. The Law of Large Numbers does not apply to any individual flip of the coin, but rather to the long-run behavior. If the coin landed heads up nine times in a row, it cannot be assured that the next flip will show tails. The probability that the next flip of the coin will be heads is still 50 percent. Even if many more heads than tails have been rolled initially, it should not be expected that heads will appear less often in the future."
http://www.bookrags.com/research/probability-and-the-law-of-large-nu-mmat-03/