Coin Tossing and Spinning – Useful Classroom Experiments for Teaching Statistics

Abstract

A dicer’s dispute in 1654 led to the creation of the theory of probability by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat. Later, 350 years after their famous correspondence, throwing a dice is still the standard way of teaching basic ideas of probability. The second classical example for randomness is tossing of a coin. Famous experiments were run by Buffon (he observed 2048 heads in 4040 coin tosses), Karl Pearson (12012 heads in 24000 coin tosses), and by John Kerrich (5067 heads in 10000 coin tosses) while he was war interned at a camp in Jutland during the second world war. Since coin tossing or rolling dice are often performed at schools. Students have some experience and they know what happens. However, simple extensions of coin tossing or dice rolling experiments can be used for illustrations of statistical ideas. Dunn (2005) proposed some nice variations rolling special types of dice. In this article we focus on repeated coin spinning by several students. We show how planning experiments including the determination of sample size, multiple testing, random effects models, overdispersion, non standard testing and autocorrelation can be illustrated in the context of coin spinning.