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The politics of game death
This is weird: the Science News is reporting on a new mathematical analysis showing that coin tosses are inherently biased — because a coin is more likely to land on the same face it started out on.
Apparently, this new discovery is based on some 1986 work done by the famous mathematician Joseph Keller. He argued that the only fair way to toss a coin is to toss it so vigorously that it spins perfectly around the horizontal axis in the center. Since it’s impossible to throw it with such precision, every other toss becomes biased — because the coin spins around a tilted axis. The end result is a coin will land on the same face it started on 51 per cent of the time. You’d need to flip a coin 10,000 times before you noticed this bias, mind you, so for all human purposes a coin-flip is still 50/50.
Though if anyone ever tries to do a coin-flip by spinning the coin on its edge on a table, watch out:
This slight bias pales when compared with that of spinning a coin on its edge. A spinning penny will land as tails about 80 percent of the time, Diaconis says, because the extra material on the head side shifts the center of mass slightly.
This also makes me wonder: If the problem with a coin-toss is that humans cannot achieve perfect spin, what about robots? Maybe we could make a robot to do perfect coin tosses with genuine 50/50 distribution. Oh, hell — there’s probably already a robot somewhere in Japan designed specifically for that purpose.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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