Basic HTML version of Foils prepared Mar 20 1999

Foil 7 Decreased Sample size.

From Java Academy:Polls and Throwing Dice NPAC Java Academy February--April 99 -- Mar 20 1999. by Geoffrey Fox
With 100 coin tosses (a polling sample of 100), the statistical error is 5% -- too big to be comfortable. There is a simple rule for such errors
  • If you want to halve error, you must quadruple the sample size. Thus with 400 coin tosses the error is 2.5% which is half the result for 100 coin tosses.
100 Coin Tosses
400 Coin Tosses
Error 5%
Error 2.5%
Shape is still a Gaussian
1000 Coin Toss Error a factor of Sqrt(10) Smaller than 100 Tosses

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