Even if you’re not a gambler, it’s safe to say that 50/50 odds are pretty good. With just as much chance of you winning as there is of you losing, people often rely on 50/50 odds to help make decisions — like deciding who's turn it is to take out the trash. A coin is often used in these kinds of situations, with the theory being that there's an equal chance that it will land on “heads" as there is that it will land on “tails.” As it turns out, that's not actually true, and it's not due to a case of "heads I win, tails you lose.” The revelation comes from a study that recorded the results of 350,757 coin tosses, and suggested that there is, in fact, a tiny bias involved in the flipping of any coin. The study involved 48 people who flipped 350,757 coins from 46 currencies. After all of the flipping, researchers found that the coins had a 50.8% chance of landing on the side that they started on. Because the coin faces the same way more in the air as it did when it started, there’s a tiny bias towards that side. The magnitude of the observed bias can be illustrated using a betting scenario. If you bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss — paying $1 to enter and winning either nothing or $2, depending on the outcome — and repeat the bet 1,000 times, knowing the starting position of the coin toss would earn you $19 on average. So, with this knowledge on your side, why not challenge someone to a coin toss and see if the odds are in your favor?
