Probability Basics

Probability is a branch of mathematics that deals with the likelihood of an event occurring. It is a way of quantifying uncertainty and measuring the likelihood of different outcomes. In the context of coin flips, probability is used to determine the likelihood of the coin landing on heads or tails.

This article is an introduction to the topic of probability. We will stick to plain language and use a coin as the only example. More advanced statistics will come in future articles.

"Heads or tails?" Three words that have settled disputes, started games, and made decisions for thousands of years. But where does that phrase actually come from? And is the coin really fair?

Flip a coin once and the outcome is a coin toss. Flip it a hundred times and something more interesting appears: a shape. Count how often each result happens and you are no longer looking at luck — you are looking at a probability distribution. This short article explains what that means, introduces the most famous distribution born from coin flips, and lets you watch one build itself, ball by ball, in an interactive Galton board.