A fair coin is thrown ten times. Find the probability that more heads arise than tails?

lunja55

lunja55

Answered question

2022-09-22

A fair coin is thrown ten times. Find the probability that more heads arise than tails?
Hi guys my question is a binomial theorem one I know that I'm just finding it hard to know what goes where. I get that in order to have more heads I must have 6 heads or more nut find it there to use the.

Answer & Explanation

Santiago Collier

Santiago Collier

Beginner2022-09-23Added 8 answers

Step 1
Actually there are three possible outcomes, when tossing a coin 10 times, which are the following (and with their respective probabilities):
1. More heads than tails: with probability p (this is the probability you are looking for).
2. More tails than heads: with the same probability, i.e. p (due to symmetry!).
3. Equal number of tails and heads: That is the probability of 5 heads, i.e.
( 10 5 ) ( 1 2 ) 5 ( 1 1 2 ) 10 5
Now, these three probabilities add up to 1 ...
Seamus Mcknight

Seamus Mcknight

Beginner2022-09-24Added 3 answers

Step 1
This is a binomial setting as you've mentioned. What we're basically looking to find is P ( H > 5 ), or the probability of getting more than 5 heads. This is what "More heads than tails" means. As you know, when we do bionmcdf(n,p,k), or use the equation, it's more convenient to change this to a probability with 0 as our lower bound. Let's turn that P ( H > 5 ) into:
P ( H > 5 ) = 1 P ( H 5 )
Cool. Let's look at the different variables we'll need for a binomial distribution. n = number of trials,  p = probability of "success",  k = number of "successes". Guess what? We know everything! n = 10, because we're tossing 10 coins. k = 5, because we're looking for P ( H 5 ) so we want MAX 5 successes, and p = 1 2 because there's a 50% chance of getting a head.
Step 2
We can just plug it into the calculator, and we'll get: 1 b i n o m c d f ( 10 , 0.5 , 5 ) = 37.6953 %. Equation-wise, recall that this is our equation:
P ( X k ) = k = 0 k ( n k ) p k ( 1 p ) n k
I am used to using the variable k twice, a little confusing but will do. For this problem, it will be:
P ( H > 5 ) = 1 P ( H 5 ) = 1 k = 0 5 ( 10 k ) ( 1 2 ) k ( 1 2 ) 10 k
This will come out to be 37.6953 % as well.
I did this one-sided because bioncdf(n,p,k) is one-sided, but you can do it like this too:
P ( H > 5 ) = k = 6 10 ( 10 k ) ( 1 2 ) k ( 1 2 ) 10 k
I started from 6 because it doesn't include 5 (greater than).

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