Expanding on what Gene said: 1. no real physical coin is fair, the question is, how unfair is it. 2. for a coin that is close to being fair, the tossing mechanism and how it varies with each toss have to be taken into account. Even with a spring-loaded mechanical thumb, there will be variations due to metal fatigue, friction in the release mechanism, air temperature, etc. Best regards Neil Neil J. A. Sloane, President, OEIS Foundation. 11 South Adelaide Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904, USA. Also Visiting Scientist, Math. Dept., Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ. Phone: 732 828 6098; home page: http://NeilSloane.com Email: njasloane@gmail.com On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Adam P. Goucher <apgoucher@gmx.com> wrote:
Because each time you toss a coin, its internal state changes?
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2016 at 11:06 PM From: "David Makin" <makinmagic@tiscali.co.uk> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Subject: Re: [math-fun] how to test whether a coin is fair
I'd guess that you'd actually have to check the evenness of all sample rates, not just a "1" and a "0" but also "00" vs. "01" vs. "10" vs. "11" and "000" vs."001" etc............... i.e, use the same check as for checking the randomness of a pseudo random generator.
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun