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The probability of a run of coin tosses of any length continuing for one more toss is always 0.5. The reasoning that a fifth toss is more likely to be tails because the previous four tosses were heads, with a run of luck in the past influencing the odds in the future, forms the basis of the fallacy.
(Note: r is the probability of obtaining heads when tossing the same coin once.) Plot of the probability density f(r | H = 7, T = 3) = 1320 r 7 (1 − r) 3 with r ranging from 0 to 1. The probability for an unbiased coin (defined for this purpose as one whose probability of coming down heads is somewhere between 45% and 55%)
Coin flipping, coin tossing, or heads or tails is the practice of throwing a coin in the air and checking which side is showing when it lands, in order to randomly choose between two alternatives. It is a form of sortition which inherently has two possible outcomes.
A fair coin, when tossed, should have an equal chance of landing either side up. In probability theory and statistics, a sequence of independent Bernoulli trials with probability 1/2 of success on each trial is metaphorically called a fair coin. One for which the probability is not 1/2 is called a biased or unfair coin.
For example, a fair coin toss is a Bernoulli trial. When a fair coin is flipped once, the theoretical probability that the outcome will be heads is equal to 1 ⁄ 2. Therefore, according to the law of large numbers, the proportion of heads in a "large" number of coin flips "should be" roughly 1 ⁄ 2.
A gambler's fortune (capital) is a martingale if all the betting games which the gambler plays are fair. The gambler is playing a game of coin flipping. Suppose X n is the gambler's fortune after n tosses of a fair coin, such that the gambler wins $1 if the coin toss outcome is heads and loses $1 if the coin toss outcome is tails. The gambler's ...
Feller's coin-tossing constants are a set of numerical constants which describe asymptotic probabilities that in n independent tosses of a fair coin, no run of k consecutive heads (or, equally, tails) appears. William Feller showed [1] that if this probability is written as p(n,k) then
The St. Petersburg paradox or St. Petersburg lottery [1] is a paradox involving the game of flipping a coin where the expected payoff of the lottery game is infinite but nevertheless seems to be worth only a very small amount to the participants. The St. Petersburg paradox is a situation where a naïve decision criterion that takes only the ...