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How to predict a coin toss
如何预测抛硬币
Coins are fair.Their tossers, less so.
硬币是公平的。它们的抛掷者就没那么公平了。
Legend holds that the city of Portland, Oregon, was nearly called Boston.
传说俄勒冈州的波特兰市差点被称为波士顿。
A coin toss in 1845 between Francis Pettygrove, who hailed from a different Portland, in Maine, and Asa Lovejoy, from Boston (the one in Massachusetts) eventually decided the matter.
1845年，来自缅因州另一个波特兰的弗朗西斯·佩蒂格罗夫和来自波士顿(马萨诸塞州的那个)的阿萨·洛夫乔伊之间的一次抛硬币最终决定了这件事。
But things might have turned out differently, per Frantisek Bartos, a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam, if people were not such wobbly tossers.
但是阿姆斯特丹大学的研究生弗兰蒂泽克·巴托斯认为，如果抛硬币的人不摇晃的话，事情可能会有不同的结果。
Mr Bartos was interested in a prediction made by Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes and Richard Montgomery, a group of American mathematicians.
巴托斯先生对一组美国数学家佩尔西·戴康尼斯，苏珊·福尔摩斯和理查德·蒙哥马利所做的预测很感兴趣。
In 2007 the trio analysed the physics of a flipping coin and noticed something intriguing.
2007年，三人组分析了抛硬币的物理过程，发现了一些有趣的现象。
Besides sending it somersaulting end-over-end, most people impart a slight rotation to a coin.
除了让硬币上下颠倒外，大多数人还会让硬币稍微旋转一下。
That causes the axis about which the coin is flipping to drift while it is in the air, a phenomenon called precession.
这会导致硬币在空中抛掷时所围绕的轴发生漂移，这种现象被称为旋进。
After crunching the numbers, the physicists concluded that a coin thrown by a human should exhibit a subtle but persistent bias.
在计算了这些数字之后，物理学家们得出结论，人类投掷的硬币应该表现出微妙但持久的偏差。
There was about a 51% chance that a coin would land the same way up as it had been prior to being thrown.
大约有51%的几率，一枚硬币会以与投掷前相同的方式落下。
If it was heads-up in the thrower’s hand, in other words, it would be slightly more likely to land heads-up too.
换句话说，如果它在投掷者手中是头朝上的，那么它也更有可能头朝上落地。
Or at least, that was the prediction.
或者至少，这是预测的结果。
