coin flips and random thoughts
Updated 1-1-18
My husband and I were talking about coin flips and randomness today and I thought some of you guys may be interested in the discussion.
One of the questions I often get on the site is "Well, how do you know this is even working, that it isn't just all sheer random chance?"
This site has been up and running since 2011 and every year we have gotten better than 50-50 of our desired gender. The lowest success rate we've ever had has been 58%. All other years have been better than that. Wrap your brain around that for a minute - every year, the results for both pink swayers and blue swayers have been better than 50-50 and most years, significantly better than 50-50.
If this was all just sheer random chance, we'd have some years that were better than 50-50, and some years that were worse than 50-50. It would average out to be 50-50 over the course of time. If this was all just sheer random chance, it would be very unlikely that we would be sitting here, 7 years on, better than 50-50 every single year for both pink and blue.
How unlikely? Well, my husband claims that it's the odds of throwing 14 heads or 14 tails in a row. He figured this out for me and it is 1 in 16,384 times. That is pretty rare.
But I actually think it's much more astronomically unlikely than that. We're not just talking about 14 coin flips in a row. We're talking about 2 separate events, 7 coin flips in a row, happening simultaneously. 7 heads and 7 tails being tossed at the exact same time, and all 14 tosses came up exactly what they were supposed to be. I don't know how to figure out stats on stuff like this but to my mind that simply has to be quite a lot more unusual than tossing 14 heads in a row (maybe it's not, math is tricky LOL). Additionally, some people do try to toss 10, or 12, or 20 heads or tails in a row. For fun, or to win a bet, or whatever. But the way they do this is they start tossing coins and keeping track of them and then somewhere along the way, after a lot of tosses, maybe they'll get that lucky 14 in a row. They have to go through a lot of random, 50-50 tosses before they get the toss of the coin to fall their way. The idea of picking up a coin and suddenly tossing 14 in a row right off the bat? Isn't that like a lightning strike kind of event? And the idea that two separate people would simultaneously pick up two coins and the one of them toss 7 heads and the other toss 7 tails at the exact same moment seems just as crazy unlikely if not more so as tossing 14 in a row the first time you pick up a coin.
Now, I don't know if it is really as unlikely as it feels to me, but even if it's just 1 in 16,384 like my husband says, that's pretty unlikely to be sheer random chance. It strains belief to the breaking point that all this is just a weird, funny coincidence and gender is just a coin flip.
