(September 29, 2017 at 12:14 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:(September 29, 2017 at 11:57 am)Tiberius Wrote: Suppose you have a coin, and you suspect it is unfair (i.e. it lands on one side more often than the other). You don't know which side it lands on more, and for sake of argument assume you can't find out.
How can you simulate a fair coin flip using this coin only? By "fair" I mean that you should get a "heads" result exactly 50% of the time, and a "tails" result exactly 50% of the time.
Assuming only 1 flip of the coin, then if I don't know which side the coin lands on more, then it would be a fair coin flip, if I call it. (since I have a 50/50 chance of getting the dominant side).
That's actually a pretty clever way of doing it, but not the method I was looking for. It also breaks down when you have someone who chooses "heads" every single time, since they should (with a fair coin flip) win 50% of the time, but they won't.
