What Makes a Coin ‘Fair’ or ‘Biased’?

A fair coin is one that has an equal chance of landing on heads or tails. A biased coin favors one side, like when you flip a pancake and it always lands the same way. If you flip a fair coin many times, about half will be heads, and half will be tails. But if it's biased, one side comes up more often. Simple as that! ## Makes It Fair? A fair coin is like a perfectly balanced pancake, both sides are equal. That means when you flip it in the air, there’s no reason for it to favor heads or tails. If you flip it many times, it should land on both sides about equally often.

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Examples

  1. A pancake-shaped coin always lands the same way, it's biased!
  2. If you flip a fair coin ten times, about five will be heads.
  3. Your favorite chocolate bar is like a biased coin, you always get the big piece.

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Categories: Math · probability· statistics· coins· fairness · Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.