A team of researchers recorded the outcome of more than 350,000 coin tosses to try and prove a theory.
Most of us would assume that the chances of a coin landing on either side is 50/50, right?
And in quest to find out if that’s true, Stanford University Professor Persi Diaconis, who has the unusual pairing of being both a mathematician and magician, conducted an experiment where he found out that it's not - and not only that, but there’s actually a way to tip the odds in your favour.
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Diaconis found that when you flip a coin, you introduce a small amount of wobble to it and this tiny wobble slightly increases the chance of the coin landing on the same side that it started.
Last year, a team decided to test Diaconis’ findings and recorded a whopping 350,757 coin tosses using 48 different participants and 46 different currencies to see the results.
The researchers found that there was a 50.8 percent chance of the coin landing the same side as it started.
So, while the odds are very close to 50/50 - they’re not quite there.
In the paper they wrote: “According to the [Diaconis] model, precession causes the coin to spend more time in the air with the initial side facing up.
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“Consequently, the coin has a higher chance of landing on the same side as it started (i.e., ‘same-side bias’).”
They also found that some tossers appeared to show a stronger same-side bias.
Explaining the findings further - within the context of gambling - the team said: "The magnitude of the observed bias can be illustrated using a betting scenario.
"If you bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss (i.e. paying 1 dollar to enter, and winning either 0 or 2 dollars depending on the outcome) and repeat the bet 1,000 times, knowing the starting position of the coin toss would earn you 19 dollars on average.
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"This is more than the casino advantage for 6 deck blackjack against an optimal-strategy player, where the casino would make 5 dollars on a comparable bet, but less than the casino advantage for single-zero roulette, where the casino would make 27 dollars on average."
So what does all this mean?
Well, if you want to boost your chances of winning a coin toss, make sure you conceal the coin before you flip it or, as the team put it: "When coin flips are used for high-stakes decision-making, the starting position of the coin is best concealed."
Claire Reid