A statistical statement appeared in The Guardian on Friday January 4, 2002:
When spun on edge 250
times, a Belgian one-euro
coin came up heads 140 times and tails 110.
``It looks very suspicious to me," said Barry Blight, a statistics lecturer
at the London School of Economics.
``If the coin were unbiased the
chance of getting a result as extreme as that would be less than 7%."
But do these data give evidence that the coin is biased rather than fair? This one-page document gives the answer.
postscript (Cambridge UK) | postscript (Canada mirror).
pdf (Cambridge UK). | pdf (Canada mirror).
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@techreport{MacKayEuro2002,
author={David J. C. MacKay},
title={Belgian euro coins: 140 heads in 250 tosses - suspicious?},
institution={University of Cambridge, Department of Physics},
url={http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/abstracts/euro.html},
year={2002}
}