Coin Flip Test

Copying flip

flip is a program that allows you to flip from 2 to 30 coins at the same time to see how many coins turn up heads. It is used in the datagen package to illustrate the chi-square test.

flip has three parameters:

Example of how to run the program.

      flip -s 10000 -f 17

In this example, the program flips 17 coins 10 thousand times and then prints the probability distribution, the standard deviation, and the chi-square test.

The Chi-square number should fit within the Range 95 percent of the time.


References

The calculation of probabilities for the number of heads is based on the following book:

Lincoln L. Chao
Statistics for Management
2nd Edition
Palo Alto: The Scientific Press, 1984
Chapter 6, Expected Value and Population Parameters
Section 2, Population Mean and Variance

Lincoln L. Chao published his book while at California State University, Long Beach.

The chi-square test is similar to:

Chapter 12, Chi-square Tests
Section 3, Testing for Goodness of Fit
Formula 12-3
Example 12-4

In Table 12-3, each category in the chi-square test has a different expected frequency. This corresponds to the different expected frequencies for the number of heads.