Coin Tossing: The Hydrogen Atom of Probability

The coin toss is to probability theory what the hydrogen atom is to quantum mechanics. It is the simplest random event that you can imagine. There are only two possible outcomes: heads or tails. This simplicity means that many questions about coin tossing can be asked and answered in great depth, serving as a gateway for exploring probability and statistics, and a foundation for understanding many kinds of probability distributions.

This book is an update to the author’s original coin toss book (The Coin Toss: Probabilities and Patterns), expanding on run distributions and statistics, as well as a new chapter containing 26 problems and solutions. The page count has increased by over 40 percent.

The book contains material for both the beginning student and the advanced researcher. We suspect that the beginner will find some of the material quite difficult and not accessible on a first reading. This is a book that needs to be read more than once. There is more material here than anyone could absorb on a first reading. We hope that researchers on the other hand find the book to be a valuable reference and a stimulus for new research.