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399 points seanhunter | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.425s | source
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cgag ◴[] No.42184472[source]
I wouldn't be surprised if there is something to it, but I suspected they didn't use legitimate coin flips (because it seems like a large amount of people can't really flip a coin), and looking at the videos confirms it, at least for the flips done by Bartos:

https://osf.io/6a5hy/

They're very low RPM and very low time in the air. Nothing I would accept for any decision worth flipping a coin for.

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BiteCode_dev ◴[] No.42184567[source]
That's not tossing a coin, that's barely throwing it in the air.

To me this kills the credibility of the entire study and of the authors.

Sure, there may be something to it, but people will have a very different thing on their mind unless they check the video, which I wouldn't have done without your prompting.

It's unlikely they don't understand how misleading it is.

And somehow I have the intuition a proper coin toss will not exhibit the same properties.

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thrw42A8N ◴[] No.42185496[source]
Is it unlikely? If I didn't read your comment I wouldn't see any problem there. I never saw anyone flipping a coin in a different way. It's just not done much around me.
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BiteCode_dev ◴[] No.42185812[source]
If you claim to do a research on coin tossing, the minimum is to be aware on how people toss coin.

The whole purpose of tossing a coin is randomness, so of course you want high and fast.

If the result was that no matter how high and fast you throw is you get this bias, it would have been interesting.

But now you just say "if you do things badly, things don't work".

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1. ummonk ◴[] No.42185933[source]
No, the whole point of the paper (and the physics model it is verifying) is to see what happens in normal human coin tosses.

If you want to measure what happens specifically with high and fast coin tosses, then that’s an entirely different study to be done.

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2. philipov ◴[] No.42185977[source]
I don't know what a normal human coin toss is. Does the paper contain evidence/argument to justify their way of flipping a coin as "normal"?