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by anateus 3343 days ago
Some may be interested in Von Neumann's algorithm for getting fair results even from a biased coin: Toss it twice. If the results are the same, ignore. If they are different, use the first coin's result.
1 comments

The coin tosser can make that unfair. http://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/papers/headswithJ.pdf:

"We prove that vigorously-flipped coins are biased to come up the same way they started. [...] For natural flips, the chance of coming up as started is about .51."

So, start your first throw with the desired side up, and the second with the one you don't want.

I haven't calculated it, but I guesstimate that gives you about 52% probability to get the outcome you want (it certainly is more than the 51% of that paper)