In: Statistics and Probability
Ultimate frisbee players are so poor they don’t own coins. So,
team captains decide which team...
Ultimate frisbee players are so poor they don’t own coins. So,
team captains decide which team will play offense first by flipping
frisbees before the start of the game. Rather than flip one frisbee
and call a side, each team captain flips a frisbee and one captain
calls whether the two frisbees will land on the same side, or on
different sides. Presumably, they do this instead of just flipping
one frisbee because a frisbee is not obviously a fair coin - the
probability of one side seems likely to be different from the
probability of the other side.
- Suppose you flip two fair coins. What is the probability they
show different sides?
- Suppose two captains flip frisbees. Assume the probability that
a frisbee lands convex side up is pp. Compute the probability (in
terms of pp) that the two frisbees match.
- Make a graph of the probability of a match in terms of pp.
- One Reddit user flipped a frisbee 800 times and found that in
practice, the convex side lands up 45% of the time. When captains
flip, what is the probability of “same”? What is the probability of
“different”?
- What advice would you give to an ultimate frisbee team
captain?
- Is the two frisbee flip better than a single frisbee flip for
deciding the offense?