
The coin flip even is found in literature and cinema. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all four. 3, 1959, that allowed early rock 'n' roll star Ritchie Valens to get a seat on a small plane that was supposed to carry him, Buddy Holly and two others to their next concert site. The Oregon city of Portland got its name after a best two-out-of-three penny toss by two settlers. But coin flips also have played much more prominent roles. Tossing a coin long has been a choice for deciding trivial matters - like a dinner-table spat over the last piece of pizza. "You have to know how it starts."Īnd if you know that, the researchers believe, then you have a better chance of knowing how it will land. "But they've all been wrong because people write down whether it comes up heads or tails, but they don't know how it started," said Susan Holmes, a Stanford University statistics professor who co-authored the study, which was published in 2007. There even was an unscientific look by a prisoner who once flipped a coin 10,000 times inside his cell. The humble coin toss has been the subject of considerable study by researchers exploring concepts such as probability and statistics. In other words, more than random luck is at work. How much more likely? At least 51 percent of the time, the researchers claim, and possibly as much as 55 percent to 60 percent - depending on the flipping motion of the individual. If tails is facing up when the coin is perched on your thumb, it is more likely to land tails up.
#HEADS OR TAILS COIN FLIP PRO#
It also could have profound implications in America's favorite sport - pro football - because the coin flip plays an integral role in deciding games that go into overtime.īut first, here's what the researchers concluded: Using a high-speed camera that photographed people flipping coins, the three researchers determined that a coin is more likely to land facing the same side on which it started.
