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Topic: Coin flipping

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	Coin flipping - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Coin flipping or coin tossing is the practice of throwing a coin in the air to resolve a dispute between two parties.
		Coin flipping is a method that trusts the decision to pure luck, since there is no possibility for strategy, and any attempt to alter the odds (such as, most obviously, using a fake coin with both sides the same) is considered cheating.
		The most popular coin to flip in Canada and the United States is the quarter because of its size; in the UK a 2p, 10p or 50p piece is favoured.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Coin_flipping (1796 words)

	Coin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		A coin is usually a piece of hard material, generally metal and usually in the shape of a disc, which is issued by a government to be used as a form of money.
		Some coins have coin orientation, where the coin must be flipped vertically to see the other side; other coins, such as British coins, have medallic orientation, where the coin must be flipped horizontally to see the other side.
		Coins are popularly used as a sort of two-sided die; in order to choose between two options with a random possibility, one choice will be labeled "heads" and the other "tails," and a coin will be flipped or "tossed" to see whether the heads or tails side comes up on top.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Coin (1147 words)

	Coin flipping -- Facts, Info, and Encyclopedia article (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		Coin flipping or coin tossing is the practice of throwing a (A metal piece (usually a disc) used as money) coin in the air to resolve a (A disagreement or argument about something important) dispute between two parties.
		Coin flipping as a game was known to the Romans as "navia aut caput" (ship or head), as some coins had a (A vessel that carries passengers or freight) ship on one side and the head of the (The male ruler of an empire) emperor on the other.
		In some jurisdictions, a coin is flipped to decide between two candidates who poll equal number of votes in an (A vote to select the winner of a position or political office) election, or two companies (A boat for communication between ship and shore) tendering equal prices for a project.
	www.absoluteastronomy.com /encyclopedia/c/co/coin_flipping.htm (1590 words)

	Coin flipping - Definition up Erdmond.Com
		or coin tossing is the practice of throwing a coin in the air to resolve a dispute between two parties.
		During coin flipping the coin is flipped into the air, usually by resting it on a bent index finger and hitting the edge of it with the thumb, or a similar motion.
		The most popular coin to flip in the United_States is the quarter because of its size; however, participants will use any coin that is handy.
	www.erdmond.com /Coin_flipping.html (995 words)

	Novelty coin flipping device - Patent 4061338 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		A novelty coin flipping device as defined in claim 4 further including lever support means positioned on said base adjacent to said tubular member and adjacent to said digitally engageable portion of said lever, and pivot means connected between said lever and said lever support means.
		A coin normally rests upon the support pad, but when the lever is depressed, the coin is flipped upwardly through the tubular member in such a fashion that the coin rotates from a "heads" position to a "tails" position and back to a "heads " position, and so on.
		When the coin 40 flips upward, and because it is starting from an angularly disposed position, the coin will flip over and over from its "heads" position to its "tails" position and back to its "heads" position during the time that the coin continues to rise in the tubular member.
	www.freepatentsonline.com /4061338.html (1726 words)

	Encyclopedia: Coin
		Coin collecting is the hobby of collecting coins.
		Electrum coin of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus.
		The British decimal fifty pence (50p) coin was issued in October 1969 in the run-up to decimalisation to replace the ten shilling note.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Coin (2431 words)

	Muse: Flipping a Coin
		Flipping a coin is a common way to start off a game or settle a question.
		Because you expect that the coin is as likely to come up heads as tails, it sounds like a fair way to make a choice.
		So if you flip a penny to decide something, it's wise to catch it before it has a chance to roll, spin, or bounce to a stop.
	www.sciencenewsforkids.org /pages/puzzlezone/muse/muse0403.asp (376 words)

	Coin flipping
		It is generally assumed that the outcome is unpredictable, with equal probabilities for the two outcomes, although careful analysis has shown that is not quite the case.
		This is particularly true if the coin is allowed to roll on one edge upon landing.
		Also in the popular movie Batman Forever the villain, Two-Face, has a double-sided coin (both sides are "heads") with one side defaced--a parallel to his actual character, because one side of his face is deformed.
	www.sciencedaily.com /encyclopedia/coin_flipping (1090 words)

	Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails: Science News Online, Feb. 28, 2004 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		Since the coin never actually flips, it is guaranteed to land on the same face that it started out on.
		Keller observes, "Some people can throw the coin up so that it just wobbles but looks to the observer as if it is turning over." To see whether the predicted bias shows up in actual coin tosses, the team made movies of tossed coins and then calculated the axes of spin.
		The purpose of a coin toss is to determine an outcome in the real world, however.
	www.sciencenews.org /articles/20040228/fob2.asp (791 words)

	Ivars Peterson's MathTrek - Heads or Tails
		Flipping a coin in the air, catching it, then determining whether it has come up heads or tails is a common way to start off a game or settle a question.
		A new mathematical analysis now suggests that, in a typical toss, a coin is more likely to land on the same face as it started out on (see Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails).
		In the physics of coin tossing, the most important parameters are the coin's upward velocity and its rate of spin.
	www.maa.org /mathland/mathtrek_03_01_04.html (654 words)

	An Accidental World
		If we got a handle on the exact forces exerted on the coin as it is flipped, the mass distribution of the coin, the local strength of gravity, even the density variations in the air it spins through, we could do better than 50% in guessing whether it turns up heads or tails.
		The simple, idealized random coin flip is just an approximation we use when we know too little about the values of the many relevant variables we need to describe a Newtonian coin.
		If a coin flip is random, we know that in the long run, the frequency of heads and tails will be about equal.
	www2.truman.edu /~edis/writings/articles/coin.html (1070 words)

	coin flipping - Physics Help and Math Help - Physics Forums
		Once this is known, how many times would you expect to flip a coin before you get 10 in a row(I of course dont mean that after this number you would be guaranteed to get 10 in a row, i just mean statistically).
		The first flip is always free, so after any given flip there is a 1 in.5^9 [1/512] chance the next nine flips will be the same.
		The odds of any single flip not being followed by 9 more of the same is 1-1/512 [%99.8] [it is often simpler to figure probabilities when you calculate the odds of failing, then subtract 1].
	www.physicsforums.com /showthread.php?t=59904 (890 words)

	Math Forum - Ask Dr. Math (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		Each flip of the coin can result in 2 distinct and equally likely outcomes, H or T. Moreover, the result of any coin flip is not influenced by or dependent upon any previous coin flip.
		That last statement regarding independence of the coin flips is very important; it tells us that all possible outcomes after 5 coin flips are equally likely, or have the same probability.
		The chance of getting T(first flip), then T(second flip), then T(third flip), H on the fourth flip and H on the fifth flip is: (1/2)(1/2)(1/2)(1/2)(1/2) = 1/32.
	mathforum.org /library/drmath/view/56587.html (343 words)

	FLIPPING A COIN (# HEADS VS. # TAILS)
		Response: It is true that if you flip a coin many, many times, the proportion of heads and the proportion of tails should both approach 50%.
		Note that the question-asker is thinking that the difference between number of heads and number of tails should approach zero after many flips.
		That is, it would have to realize that it would have to come up with more heads than tails during the next 100 flips in order to reach the expected number of heads (100) and the expected number of tails (100) after 200 flips.
	www.herkimershideaway.org /writings/htcoin.htm (321 words)

	Science News: Taking no chances - predicting supposedly random behavior such as coin flipping
		Their example is the flipping of a coin.
		Coin flipping has been considered the epitome of a random and chancy process, used as an example by students of games of chance since Blaise Pascal.
		Expressing surprise that it has taken three centuries to figure the contrary, Vulkovic and Prange argue that coin flipping obeys Mewton's laws, and that each flip depends on the impulse given the coin by the thumb and the height above the floor from which the coin starts.
	www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v127/ai_3720678 (395 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		Select one of the "auto" choices from the list on the top right to make the coin flip repeatedly at different speeds.
		As the number of times the coin is flipped increases, the graph shows the percentage of heads out of all flips.
		Initially it may be some distance of from the midpoint at 1/2, but as the number of flips gets larger and larger, the tendency is always for the graph to approach the line.
	www.wiley.com /college/mat/gilbert139343/java/java04_s.html (149 words)

	Investor Home - Coin-Flipping & Graham-and-Doddsville
		After ten flips there would be approximately 260,000 people that had successfully called ten consecutive coin flips.
		After 20 flips, based purely on chance, there would be approximately 250 people that had called 20 consecutive coin flips - a seemingly miraculous feat.
		Press coverage and inquiries about their coin calling ability would increase with each successive flip.
	www.investorhome.com /coinflip.htm (971 words)

	Lower bounds for distributed coin-flipping and randomized consensus (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		In these games, a sequence of local coin flips is generated, which must be combined to form a single global coin flip.
		We show that to guarantee at most constant bias, Omega(t²) local coins are needed, even if (a) the local coins can have arbitrary distributions and ranges, (b) the adversary is required to decide immediately whether to hide or reveal each local coin, and (c) the game can detect which local coins have been hidden.
		If the adversary is permitted to control the outcome of the coin except for cases whose probability is polynomial in t, Omega(t²/log² t) local coins are needed.
	www.cs.yale.edu /homes/aspnes/coin-abstract.html (277 words)

	NPR : The Not So Random Coin Toss
		All Things Considered, February 24, 2004 · Flipping a coin may not be the fairest way to settle disputes.
		The randomness in a coin toss, it appears, is introduced by sloppy humans.
		Each human-generated flip has a different height and speed, and is caught at a different angle, giving different outcomes.
	www.npr.org /templates/story/story.php?storyId=1697475 (264 words)

	Citebase - Quantum weak coin-flipping with bias of 0.192
		Coin tossing is a cryptographic task in which two parties who do not trust each other aim to generate a common random bit.
		Each classical public-coin protocol for coin flipping is naturally associated with a quantum protocol for weak coin flipping.
		We find that, for one choice of parameters in the protocol, the maximum probability of a dishonest party winning the coin flip if the other party is honest is 1/sqrt(2).
	citebase.eprints.org /cgi-bin/citations?id=oai:arXiv.org:quant-ph/0403193 (1065 words)

	flipacoin.net - Flip a coin, any coin!
		Flip a coin in the comfort of your own browser!
		Flipping a coin is, in my opinion, the best way to decide between two options.
		If you need to decide what to name your first-born son, you can flip a coin.
	www.flipacoin.net (136 words)

	Fabulous Adventures In Coding : The National Coin Flipping League Championship Series (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		The odds of Boston flipping T T T and then coming back to win with H H H H are one in 128.
		We don't see this effect with coin flips because the probability of heads vs. tails in a coin flip is known from the outset and thus statistics (as opposed to plain old probability) never comes into play.
		The coin doesn't remember what happened the last time it was tossed, so it has the same 50% chance of each outcome on every toss.
	blogs.msdn.com /ericlippert/archive/2004/10/21/245872.aspx (4679 words)

	Coin buffs flipping over mutants of Wis. quarters \| The Arizona Daily Star ®
		The rare coins appear to have an extra leaf on the cornstalk, one variety curving up and one curving down.
		Old Pueblo Coin, 4420 E. Speedway, is also selling sets of three state quarters, including the two rare ones, for $1,600, said owner Rob Weiss.
		The rare coins came from the Denver Mint and were part of a Nov. 29 shipment.
	www.dailystar.com /dailystar/dailystar/61117.php (918 words)

	coin flipper (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		Click on the "flipper" button to flip the coin 100 times.
		Move the slider to adjust the speed of the flips.
		Watch (but don't touch) the other sliders which count the number of heads, tails, and total flips.
	www.mathcats.com /microworlds/coinflipper.html (62 words)

	► » Imagine a coin flipping tournament (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		A single elimination coin flipping tournamet where the winner would either have
		If you just keep flipping the coin until you lose on average it will
		average of all contestants' "flip length", which is, of course,
	www.science-chat.org /Imagine-a-coin-flipping-tournament-8671195.html (738 words)

	Secure Coin Flipping (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog) (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-05)
		While preparing it I realized there was one cool cryptographical protocol I hadn’t executed yet: secure coin flips.
		Alice picks a random number and hashes it (using a previously agreed-upon hash function — a hash function is a function that takes a message and scrambles it up) and reveals the hash.
		He doesn’t know the number, only the hash (which is designed to be practically impossible to reverse) so he’s making a shot in the dark.
	www.aaronsw.com /weblog/000218 (258 words)

	COIN FLIPPING: A BINOMIAL EXPERIENCE
		They are flipping 8 pennies, and counting the number of heads that appear.
		As you can note, at this point in the experiment, the "4" column contains the most coins, with the "3" and "5" column a bit behind.
		I'd be willing to bet that when Cade, --------, Tyler, and Derek do the measurements with the experimental data, their empirical probability values will be reasonably close to the theoretical.
	www.herkimershideaway.org /writings/coin8fl.htm (213 words)

	Coin, coin purse, coin holder
		Coin auctions, gold coins and currency are part of Heritage Rare Coin Galleries, the largest rare coin dealer and auctioneer in the world.Huge inventory.
		Coin Organizer Deluxe is a complete program that allows coin collectors, hobbyists, dealers, and clubs to organize, catalog, and manage their coin...
		A Discourse of Coin and Coinage by Rice Vaughan 1675 A Discourse...
	www.collectionresearch.com /coin.html (1691 words)

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