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Flipping coins
If you want to know the
of a coin landing
, heads is the favorable outcome. There is
for a coin to land heads, so the
of the
.
The sample space consists of the total number of ways that a coin can land. Since a coin can
land
or
–
- the sample space is made up of
and the denominator of the probability fraction is
.
Thus the probability of a coin landing heads is
, which is the same as saying that a coin lands heads
% of the time.
What is the probability of the coin landing tails? We can do the same analysis as for the coin landing heads, finding a probability of
, or, knowing that if a coin doesn't land heads it has to land tails, and understanding that
of the
MUST be equal to
, subtract:
the probability of a coin landing tails must be
.
In this case,
(a 1/2 chance of landing either heads or tails) remain
; NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES you flip a coin,
time the coin is EQUALLY likely to fall
or
.
Even if your coin has fallen heads
times
, the chance that the next toss will fall tails is still
%.
So, if you get tails
times in a row your chances of getting heads on your next toss is NOT greater than
%.
