"Heads or Tails" - not exactly an honest lot

• "Heads or Tails" - not exactly an honest lot

Who gets the last slice of pizza? Flip a coin. But for common reflection, may not be worth it. Orlyanka - a time-tested method of solving problems, but, oddly enough, not quite honest. Better to just split the last piece at all.

Sinister question: heads or tails?

Imagine all the problems in the history of ever solved by tossing a coin. I bet that few of the participants knew that the odds are not exactly equal. It turns out that a rotating penny in 80% of cases falls tails up. This is the conclusion arrived Percy Diaconis of management at Stanford University statistics by performing a mathematical analysis of this action in 2004. That's because a penny a bit harder from the eagle, because of this center of gravity, causing the coin in most cases fall tails upwards. Nerebristym coins with the edge (e.g., US 5 cents) also have a small offset center of gravity. By the way, magicians often erode coins from the tails, the weight difference is greater than the probability of tails up falling increases more.

Tossed a coin and can deceive you. If, tossing a coin into the air, you let it drop onto a hard surface, to see the result, often the coin will rotate more, before finally falling. And, as we have seen, often rotating the coin falls tails up. Please note that old Penny can not give you such a deviation in weight, as new. At least approximately, but must take into account everything: dust, dirt and stuff, which have adhered to the coin of the time of use and to shift the center of gravity.

To catch or not?

Now forget about the eagle and Tails. Think better to catch a coin or not? This may seem silly, but according to a study deaconess, honest is thrown into the air to catch a coin, than let it fall to the floor and twisted until she falls herself. Your hand - is not such a hard and flat surface, like the floor, so the coin will land on a downward path, in whatever time you have not been framed hand. But, you guessed it, even this does not give the complete randomness of the result.

Deaconesses believes that any coin thrown up still will tend to fall tails up (51 to 49, to be precise). In 1986, the mathematician Joseph Keller proved that one of the most honest ways to flip a coin - is to throw it so that it is ideally rotated about a horizontal axis through its center. But to do this, you need a superhuman ability, so do not even count.