For all of you that thought tossing a coin and the resulting “heads” or “tails” was random, guess again. There has been a study done at prestigious Stanford University that proves, it seems, that the way a coin starts out can determine the way it lands (read all about it here).
The folks who studied this built a mechanical coin flipper and sure enough, they could get it to come out the way they wanted 100% of the time. When you flip by hand, however, it’s a bit different. The autofilpper rotates the coin on one axis, when you flip manually the coin rotates on a number of axes. However, even then, there is a 1 percent change, small but provable, that the coin will come up the way it started.
(That’s about the same odds as boys being born versus girls -about 51% of all babies are boys. I when the conversation comes up with a pregnant woman, I always go for “It’s a boy”. I’m right at least 1% more than I’m wrong.)
However, one of the researchers at Stanford is also a magician. He can make the coin come up the way he wants 100% of the time. When asked how he did it? It’s simple. “It’s Magic.”
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I once told a young, unmarried man in the office that was criticizing my parenting skills, “May all your children be girls.” 10 years later, he is married with 3 girls (no boys).