Tossing coins - theory

Probability --- coins experiment --- coins theory --- dice experiment --- dice theory --- for teachers

How to write a probability

What are the possible outcomes?

How many possible outcomes?

Working out probabilities by counting

Calculating probabilities

Pascal's triangle

How to write a probability

Probabilities are written as numbers between zero and one. A probability of

one means that the event is certain. If you toss a coin, it will come up a head
or a tail. So there is a probability of one that either of these will happen. A
probability of zero means that an event is impossible. If you toss a coin, you
cannot get both a head and a tail at the same time, so this has zero
probability. Anything that can happen but is not certain is written as a number
less than one. It could be a decimal, a fraction, a percentage, or described as
"one in a thousand", which is another way of writing a fraction. All these are
ways of describing probabilities. The coins experiment anddice
experiment pages use percentages. Much of the theory is easier in fractions.

There are a couple of important points. Firstly, probabilities do not tell you
what is going to happen, they merely tell you what is likely to happen. It is
unlikely that you will toss twenty coins and that they will all come up heads.
But if enough people toss enough coins for long enough, then this may well
happen. It will startle the person it happens to, but think of all the people it
didn't happen to! Secondly, if you toss a coin nineteen times and it comes up
heads each time, then it is not more likely that the next toss will be a tail. The
odds stay the same, at 50%. The tosses are called 'independent events' which
means that the coin can't remember what has happened to it. While twenty
heads in a row is unlikely, once you have nineteen heads in a row, the unlikely
event has already happened. The potential twentieth head has the same
probability as the first head. Another way of looking at it is that any sequence
of twenty tosses is unlikely as twenty heads in a row, even if it looks random.
But you have to write down the sequence before you start tossing to see if
you get it!

What are the possible outcomes?

When we toss a coin, there are two possibly outcomes. It can be a head or a
tail, which are both equally likely. If we toss two coins, there can be two heads,
two tails, or a head and a tail. It is tempting to say that there are three equally
possible outcomes. But this would be wrong. You must think of the coins
separately. It might be easier to imagine tossing one coin first and the other
after (or even tossing the same coin twice, which has exactly the same effect).
Or you could imagine two different values of coins, so they can be told apart.
Now you can see that there are four possibilities: both heads, both tails, first
coin a head and the second a tail, and first coin a tail and the second a head.

Select number of coins to see all possible outcomes: (H is a

head and T is a tail)

How many possible outcomes?

You can see that the number of possible outcomes gets bigger and bigger.
Click on One more coin to see how the number of possible outcomes
increases:

With 1 coin, there are 2 possible outcomes

It is quite easy to find the different outcomes, since they are represented by
the binary numbers with that amount of digits, with H representing the digit
one and Trepresenting zero. This also shows us how many outcomes there
are, since there are 2n possible binary numbers with n digits.
Working out probabilies by counting

Once you have listed all possible outcomes, then you can work out the
probabilities quite easily. Say that you are going to toss three coins, and you
want to work out the probability of only one head (and so two tails). The
possible outcomes are:

TTT, TTH, THT, THH, HTT, HTH, HHT, HHH

All these outcomes are different, and they are all equally likely. There are 8 of
them. There are 3 tosses with only one head:

TTH, THT, HTT

So the probability is 3/8. You can convert this into a decimal 0.375 or a
percentage 37.5%, which you can round to 38% if you wish. Or you can
describe it as a three in eight chance. All these mean the same.

You can list the possible outcomes above for any dice up to 6 and count the
tosses which match the probability that you want. Then divide it by the total
number of throws. Or you can use this calculator, where the computer counts
the number of tosses for you!

Select number of coins: Select number of

heads:

Now you can work out the probabilities for various combinations for heads and
coins, then you can experiment to see if reality matches the probability! You
will find it won't necessarily match (although the more numbers of throw, the
closer it will get), but the experiments should give figures fairly close to the
probability.

Calculating probabilities
The counting method works, and is very good for getting the right answer with
a small number of coins. However, for larger numbers, we need a more
mathematical approach. We know that the probability will be a fraction, and
we know that the denominator (the number underneath) is 2n for n coins. The
problem is working out the numerator (the number on top). We don't want to
count all the cases where it happens. What we can do is start with one coin,
then add a coin at a time, and see what difference it makes to the probability.
This starts to build up a pattern.

if
if coin total
coin
is a of
is a
head these
tail

The probabilities for throwing a single

coin are obvious: chance of 1
1 0 1
head

chance of no
0 1 1
heads

Now we add a coin. It will if new if new

either be a head or a tail. total of
coin coin
these
We consider the is a head is a tail
probabilities separately. If
it's a head, then the result
for both coins will be either chance of 2 heads 1 0 1
2 heads or 1 head. If it's a
tail, then the result will be
either 2 tails (and so no
heads) or 1 tail (and so 1 chance of 1 head 1 1 2
head). We can write down
these probabilities, and get
the final probability by chance of no
0 1 1
adding them. heads
You have to be careful about adding probabilities. Sometimes you can't, and if
you try, you end up with a probability of more than one, which is not allowed -
one means certain, remember! However, here you can. This means that we
are considering the case of the new coin being either a head or a tail. The
new coin can't be both, so these cases are independent of each other, which
means that we are allowed to add the probabilities.

if new if new
total of
coin coin
these
is a head is a tail

We add a third coin. The chance of 3 heads 1 0 1

logic is the same, except
we have more cases to
consider. But you can see
chance of 2 heads 2 1 3
that we're just copying the
probabilities from the
previous case.
chance of 1 head 1 2 3

chance of no
0 1 1
heads

if new if new
total of
coin coin
these
is a head is a tail

chance of 4 heads 1 0 1
We add a fourth coin.

chance of 3 heads 3 1 4

chance of 2 heads 3 3 6
 chance of 1 head 1 3 4

chance of no
0 1 1
heads

if new if new
total of
coin coin
these
is a head is a tail

chance of 5 heads 1 0 1

chance of 4 heads 4 1 5

We add a fifth coin.

chance of 3 heads 6 4 10

chance of 2 heads 4 6 10

chance of 1 head 1 4 5

chance of no
0 1 1
heads

Pascal's triangle

The pattern that emerges from the above example is something called
Pascal's triangle (after Blaise Pascal a French mathematician). You work this
out like this. Every line is made by adding the two numbers in the line above.
You assume that there are zeros at the start and end of each line, and you
start with a one in the top row. Pascal's triangle crops up a lot in probability. In
particular, take the nth row of Pascal's triangle, and the mth number in it, and
you have the numerator (top bit) of the probability of finding m heads when
tossing n coins.

1 1

1 2 1

1 3 3 1

1 4 6 4 1

1 5 10 10 5 1

1 6 15 20 15 6 1

Jo Edkins 2007 - Return to Probability index