Calculating Odds of Coin Toss: Accurate?

  • Level: High School 
  • Thread starter Thread starter subhailc
  • Start date Start date
Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
2 replies · 15K views
subhailc
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
the chance of a coin toss coming up heads is 1 in 2. i assume that the chance of it coming up heads twice in a row is 1 in 4; three times consecutively 1 in 8; 4 times 1 in 16; 5 times 1 in 32, etc... is this accurate? if not, how would that be calculated?

tyia
 
Last edited:
Physics news on Phys.org
That's right. For the first few cases you can write down the outcomes. Such as H T, HH HT TH TT, and so on, count the number of events favourable to the outcome of all tosses showing a head(which is 1 in all cases), and count the total number of outcomes. You will notice that for n tosses, the probability is [itex]\frac{1}{2^n}[/itex].