[Virginia-American]

Coin flipping: I read once (Martin Gardner, IIRC), years ago, that a computer can routinely beat a person at matching pennies. The computer can generate a sequence that is more randomly distributed than a person can.

[forsnax5]

Coin flipping: I read once (Martin Gardner, IIRC), years ago, that a computer can routinely beat a person at matching pennies. The computer can generate a sequence that is more randomly distributed than a person can.

This story was in the news just recently:

Feb. 24, 2004 -- Flipping a coin may not be the fairest way to settle disputes. About a decade ago, statistician Persi Diaconis started to wonder if the outcome of a coin flip really is just a matter of chance. He had Harvard University engineers build him a mechanical coin flipper. Diaconis, now at Stanford University, found that if a coin is launched exactly the same way, it lands exactly the same way.

The randomness in a coin toss, it appears, is introduced by sloppy humans. Each human-generated flip has a different height and speed, and is caught at a different angle, giving different outcomes.

But using high speed cameras and equations, Diaconis and colleagues have now found that even though humans are largely unpredictable coin flippers, there's still a bias built in: If a coin starts out heads, it ends up heads when caught more often than it does tails.

*Note: In football's inaugural kickoff coin toss, the coin is not caught but allowed to bounce on the ground. That introduces an extra complication, one mathematicians have yet to sort out.

Another generally accepted truism bites the dust...

[Elsie]

The computer can generate a sequence that is more randomly distributed than a person can.

o?

What has that to do with MATCHING them?

(I'm not aware of the rules here)