Math: Heads and Tails isn't Fair! (Probability)

Think back to a game during gym when you had to flip a coin to see who wins the tie-breaker. Remember when the other team won? You probably yelled "That's so not fair!" at the top of your lungs. Then, you were most likely didn't really think about what you said. What if you were right?

Mathematicians at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Cruz have been researching this. They came to decide that to get accurate results, the coin needs to be spun the proper way. Sometimes, when the coin is flipped it may not even be spun the right way! It may just go into the air and come down. During experiments, researchers learned it is impossible to tell from just watching the coin to see if it flipped or not.

To see the coin move, the coin was video taped. They learned that the coin has a 51% chance of landing on the side it began with. To sum it all up, coin tosses aren't worth it so don't bother to do them!

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