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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics in the news and in life

Tim Harford explains the numbers and statistics in the news and in life.

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Factual

Someone has just tossed a coin and is revealing that the result is heads.

13/06/2014

Heads Or Tails?

BBC World Service - More or Less, Heads Or Tails?

What can we learn about happiness if people make key life decisions based on a coin toss?

What can we learn about happiness when people make key life decisions based on a coin toss? And we look into the birthday paradox using the World Cup's ideal data-set.

Freakonomics guru Steven Levitt joins us to talk about an unusual experiment – getting people to agree to make major life decisions based on the toss of a coin. Is this really good social science? And what do the results tell us about decision making and happiness? 

With 365 days in the year, it feels like a huge coincidence when we meet someone with the same birthday. But you only need 23 people to have a better than even chance that two will share a birthday. This counter-intuitive result is known as the birthday paradox, and the best place to look for proof is the World Cup, where 32 squads of 23 players provide an ideal data-set. Alex Bellos crunches the numbers for us.

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