[brownbat]

That's why cypherpunks each bring their own coin and XOR the heads. Or flip a biased coin twice. If you get HH or TT, discard and start over. If you get HT or TH, take the first flip of the pair.

More to the paper, I liked the point about using unexpected results to drive student engagement. In one of the early episodes of Very Bad Wizards, they described some aspects of teaching as like a magic show. I think it's a good analogy.

http://verybadwizards.com/

[bmm6o]

"Or flip a biased coin twice" - TFA argues that there is no such thing.

> That's why cypherpunks each bring their own coin and XOR the heads

I'm not sure what part of the article you are referring to here, but this is more about the XOR being decorrelated from either of the inputs than about anything to do with the efficacy/existence of a biased coin, right?

[brownbat]

> a biased coin ... TFA argues that there is no such thing.

The article repeatedly admits biased coins exist, it just adds a flipping protocol that can mitigate this bias, a protocol that can only be verified by a nonflipper who can accurately measure the angle of spin and number of rotations with the naked eye in under a second.

You can instead generate unbiased "flips" through math, rather than physics and trusting someone else's thumb.