journal article·2019-12-01Open access

Randomness at large numbers: Experimental proof in coin toss and prime number

Yeseul Kim, Byung Mook Weon

AIP Advances· Volume 9· Issue 12

Abstract

Randomness is a central concept to statistics and physics. Here, we conduct experimental investigations with a coin toss and prime number to show experimental evidence that tossing coins and finding last digits of prime numbers are statistically identical with respect to equally likely outcomes. The range of frequency of an outcome (R) is normalized by the total number of repetitions (N) to be the range of relative frequency (R/N). We find that R/N has a power-law scaling R/N ∼ N−0.6, which is valid for large numbers in both cases of a coin toss and the last digit of a prime number. This analysis, indicating R/N → 0 at N → ∞, confirms that randomness and equally likely outcomes can be valid for large numbers.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis · Statistical Mechanics and Entropy · Fractal and DNA sequence analysis

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Affiliations

Soft Matter Physics Laboratory, School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology (SAINT), Sungkyunkwan University 1 , Suwon 16419, South Korea

Research Center for Advanced Materials Technology, Sungkyunkwan University 2 , Suwon 16419, South Korea

Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University 3 , Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA

Funding

National Research Foundation of Korea

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