I toss a penny and observe whether it lands heads up or tails up. Suppose the penny is fair; that is, the probability of heads is 1/2 and the probability of tails is 1/2. This means that:
A)every occurrence of a head must be balanced by a tail in one of the next two or three tosses.
B)if I flip the coin many, many times, the proportion of heads will be approximately 1/2, and this proportion will tend to get closer and closer to 1/2 as the number of tosses increases.
C)regardless of the number of flips, half will be heads and half will be tails.
D)All of the answer options are correct.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

A fair coin has equal probability of landing on heads or tails, so over many, many flips the proportion of heads will approach 1/2, and the average result will be close to 50% heads and 50% tails. Option A is not accurate, as while it is possible for a string of heads to be followed by a string of tails, or vice versa, this is not guaranteed to happen. Option C is not accurate, as even with a large number of flips, random chance means that one side may still appear more frequently than the other. Option D includes all options, but only option B is fully accurate.

I Toss a Penny and Observe Whether It Lands Heads