Coin Flip

The fastest way to settle anything

A coin flip is the original tiebreaker. Who kicks off, who does dishes, which of two equally good options wins when you have argued about it for ten minutes. Nobody carries change anymore, so a browser coin is usually closer to hand than a real quarter — and it cannot land in a floor vent.

Is a digital flip really 50/50?

Yes, and arguably more so than a real coin. A physical toss is influenced by starting face, spin speed and catch height; studies have measured a small bias toward the side that started facing up. This flip draws from your browser's random number generator with an exact half-and-half split, so each result is independent and unweighted. Streaks of five or six in a row are normal and expected — random sequences look far streakier than most people assume, which is exactly why the tally counter is worth watching.

Flip ten at once

The batch button is a tiny probability lesson. Flip ten coins and you will rarely get a clean five and five; six-four and seven-three show up constantly. Do it a few times in a classroom and the running tally at the top slowly creeps toward an even split, which is the law of large numbers happening in front of the room in under a minute.

Use it with the other pickers

A coin handles two options. When there are more, the spinner wheel or the random number generator take over, and the name picker handles whole rosters. Once the coin decides who is first, time the turn with the stopwatch.