Heads or tails, what’s the deal with this game? I’ve seen it being played at just about any theme park across the country. The classic “heads or tails” game is an old time favorite and seems to be coming back in a big way at the amusement parks of today. But why is it always the same old theme? If you ask me, I’d say that it just might be one of those things that kids seem to like and really get a kick out of.
Through all of my years as an amusement park entertainer, I have yet to meet a child who doesn’t like the classic “coin flip generator” or the head/tails game. During my years as a kid, I saw countless variations on the theme. At one time there was a game that involved the “tails or heads” contest. I can remember the excitement that came with winning a prize after flipping over a coin. It was akin to that moment in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” when Indiana Jones knocks over the clay more than once.
https://haihuayonline.com/how-to-play-pinky-head/ I also remember those wild swings in the “heads or tails” game where you had the possibility to flip a coin and see if it landed heads or tails. Given a normal distribution of the probability, heads or tails coin flip would have a very low probability. So the winner would still wind up with whatever odds were normal for that category. The true thrill was seeing how many flips the “head” coin received, since there was still the chance that it landed tails.
In those days, there was a fun little toy that could be easily rolled around inside a clam shell which gave off a little bit of luck. The probabilities were always different depending on the size of the clam shell and the thickness of the beads. Because of this, I wanted to demonstrate the deviation from a normal distribution by rolling one small bead randomly into the center of the clam shell over again. This gave us some idea of what we were dealing with and showed me that we had to consider the dice roller and its effects on the probability of tails.
To make my experiment more fun, I decided to use a coin flipper. A coin flipper is simply a device that looks like a vacuum cleaner that you hold up to your ear and press the lever down which makes a very loud “click” noise. What you hear is the distinctive sound of the lever hitting the floor making the soft whirring noise. I held the lever down and pressed it against my ear and against the table. After several seconds I heard the “click” again, but this time I heard it come from a slightly further distance.
I ended up winning by a narrow margin, but it was close. When I compared the results with the normal distribution results and the tails or heads frequency, it seemed to me that there wasn’t enough data to determine whether the frequencies were truly random or not. However, I did conclude that the probability of having tails or heads in a given sequence is dependent upon how the sequence is interpreted by the person playing the game. Therefore, I suggest playing this game with someone who knows a lot about probabilities and rolls and can make you do the math for you.