I almost never watch football. But this year it is being
broadcast in High Definition TV. Looks great on my 36cm
screen. Pregame show was colorful and totally uninspired.
The coin flip: the Bears win. That's the tenth coin flip in a row
won by the NFC team. Commentator notes that the odds of that are
1 in a thousand. Actually, it is two to the tenth power, which is
1024.
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Proving that you can find physics in everything, Sean Carroll points to a strange anomaly in the Super Bowl coin toss: the NFC has won 14 coin tosses in a row. The odds of this happening seem to be vanishingly small, making this a 3.8-sigma effect, almost enough to claim the detection of a new…
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Well, actually, the odds are 1 to 1023, if we're gonna beat up on the mathematically disinclined announcers. :0)
My mother-in-law calls up during half-time, "Prince is so terrible!" Priceless.
Go Colts! Even if I've got money on the Bears. I figure I feel good either way that way.
[NITPICK HAT]Well, the odds of either conference winning 10 coin tosses in a row is actually 1 in 512.[/NITPICK]
Actually, you could phrase it either as one in 1024, or 1 to 1023.