Photo: Monty Rakusen / Cultura / Getty Images
A new study has found that coin tosses actually have a "slight tendency" to land on the same side they started from.
The study recorded more than 350,000 coin flips, and they found that coins landed on the "same side" 51% of the time . . . rather than it being a completely random and unpredictable 50/50 outcome.
51% is still CLOSE to 50% . . . but it's statistically significant.
In other words, a coin flip is still random enough to decide where to get lunch . . . but this research COULD change things for more impactful stuff, like gambling, where high stakes are involved.
This isn't the first time someone talked about a "same-side" bias.
Back in 2007, researchers from Stanford did the math and determined that "vigorously flipped coins tend to come up the same way they started" . . . again, 51% of the time.
There's one caveat: In BOTH of these experiments, the coins were flipped and then caught . . . there was no bouncing.
The coins were caught in the tosser's palm. Sometimes people slap the coin down on a table or the back of their other hand . . . thus turning it over once. If you do this, then it's the REVERSE of the same-side bias, and gives a 51% chance to the side that was DOWN when the coin started.
Also, the new study involved all kinds of coins, including foreign currencies, so it wasn't an issue with the makeup or design of any one particular coin.
If you like doing coin flips, you can still keep a coin toss effectively random by either: Letting it bounce on a hard surface . . . or even by shaking the coin in your cupped hands first, so that the starting position is unknown and more "random."
Sources: Popular Mechanics / Boing Boing / Cornell University