The classic coin toss method is how we decide on things such as who gets to go first or which restaurant we should choose for lunch. It’s a simple process of choosing ‘heads’ (the coin’s side usually depicting a face) or ‘tails’ (the opposite side), flipping the coin, and whatever side the coin lands on will clarify our decisions for us.

There is a long-held belief that these coin tosses are usually at 50-50 or a one-in-two ratio for landing on the side we declare, but now scientists have proven this. They did this by testing and performing 370,757 coin tosses.

As it turns out, it is possible to turn the tides in your favor whenever you declare ‘heads’ or ‘tails’ because when you start to toss a coin, you introduce a small amount of wobble into it, according to Persi Diaconis—an American mathematician leading one of the teams in this research.

Another team supports Diaconis by stating that precession causes a coin to spend more time in the air with the initial side facing up. Hence, there is a higher possibility that the coin will land on the same side it started before the toss.

Further, Diaconis observed that 51% of coins tossed landed on the same side it initially started on. The new team approached 48 participants to flip 370,757 coins coming from 46 various currencies. As a result, it was observed that there was a 50.8% chance of the coins landing on the same side it started.

Going deeper into the study, they also found that coin tosses are highly variable between two people, which means that the tosser can turn the odds in his favor, especially if it comes to a contest of tossing the coin multiple times and guessing the correct side most of the time.

So, the next time you and a friend are finalizing a decision through a coin toss, the researchers’ best advice is to conceal the coin’s starting position before the participants take a guess.

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