TOSSING OF COINS

Taranaki Daily News, 18 October 1934, Page 15

TOSSING OF COINS

SCIENCE IN FAMILIAR FIELD. THEORY OF PROBABILITIES. Can. you imagine a scientific gentleman spinning a coin 20Q,000 times in order to determine whether heads or tails turns up the most times? That, according to the Daily Mail, London, is what, is being done with the object of furthering the study of the theory of probability. It has been done before, though perhaps not by men with scientific credentials. Very often the object has been to see that the law of probability (if there is such a thing) does not enter too largely into the proceedings, to which end cunningly devised “double headers” have played an all-impoi’tant and profitable part. In the average “school,” however, the double-header has long since gone out of date. Those whose delight it is to “head ’em” have developed a habit of examining the other fellow’s coin just to make sure that it is of the properly minted variety. But ingenuity was by no means baffled by that. The law of probability was still kept at a reasonably safe distance by the men who were able to “float” their coins, a process in which the coin merely wobbles in the air, and, while giving the impression that it is spinning in approved style, does not, in fact, spin at all. The master of the art is thus able to ensure with reasonable accuracy that heads or tails will come up as desired. . . The scientific man who has undertaken the task of tossing the coin 200,000 times will employ none of these tricks. His spinning, in the expressive American vernacular, will be strictly “on the up and up.” As there are but two sides to a penny, there would appear to be equal chances of either side turning up, and in that case the results of the professor’s tossing should be to have 100,000 heads and 100,000 “tails.” .But, as every member of the Expeditionary Forces knows, things don’t happen that way. What they also know is that when the professor has tossed his coin 200,000 times and secured a given ratio of heads to tails, then all he has to do to secure an entirely different ratio is to toss the com 200,000 times more. If anything really reliable about the theory of probability could be established it would be of the greatest value m many walks of life. Actuaries work with it and insurance companies have been studying it since insurance began. The insurance companies have developed it to a degree where they are able to te.l you better than can anybody else what your chances are of reaching old age pension age. Mathematicians and astronomers constantly employ it. But it still remains a very, nebulous theoryand though professors spin coins 200,00 J times, or many times that number of times, the chances are that they _ will contribute nothing towards placing it on a reliable basis. The fact that they are trying it just shows how wonderful science is.