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qsz comments on Open Thread May 16 - May 22, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Elo 15 May 2016 11:35PM

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Comment author: Romashka 22 May 2016 10:00:55AM 2 points [-]

A stupid question... If I ask people (n = several hundreds to thousand) to put a coin down on the table such that it wouldn't roll away, heads or tails up... I expect the overall results to be near 1:1 ratio of heads to tails... But it wouldn't be as random as when I (or they) just tossed the coin on the table, right?

Comment author: [deleted] 27 May 2016 10:09:12AM 2 points [-]

This is an interesting case. If people are free to place the coins as they wish, I wouldn't be surprised if P(heads)>P(tails) due to biases about which way is "right side up". When a face appears on a coin many people seem to think of this as the front of the coin, and in numismatic circles, the obverse is typically "heads" if a head appears on only one side (although no surprise that there are contentious debates about obverse/reverse in specific circumstances).