What are the chances that, in 5 chances flipping a coin.. you will get 5 heads?

Question

So it's a 50-50 chance for a heads on the first flip.
And a 50-50 chance for heads on the 2nd, 3rd, and so on because each flip is independent of the previous one.

But it's not a 50-50 chance that you will get 5 heads... right?

What about 50 times? What are the chances of flipping 50 tails?

I'm just a little confused.

Answer 1

You want to multiply the probabilities.
0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25 is the chance you will get two heads.

(0.5)^5 is the probability you will get five heads. That's 3.125%

For 50 heads or 50 tails in 50 flips, it's 0.5^(50)

Answer 2

The probability of flipping multiple heads is given by multiplying the probability of each instance. So, for the probability of flipping 2 heads in a row, it's 1/2 * 1/2, or a 1/4 chance - 25%.

For 5 heads in a row, it's 1/2^5, or 1/32 - 3.1%

For 50 heads in a row, it's 1/2^50, or 1/1125899906842620
- 0.000000000000089%

Answer 3

I think the chances are 1/32. Each time you flip the coin you have 1/2 chances to get heads. As you said, each flip is independent of the previous one. So you multiply (1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2)*(1/2) which gives you 1/32. If you flip 50 times you get = 1 / (2 raised in 50).
Hope I got it right!

Answer 4

Assuming a given coin flip has an equal chance of coming up heads or tails, the number of ways a given set of coin flips can result is 2^n where n is the number of coin flips.

So 5 coin flips can come up 2^5 or 32 ways. Since there's only one way all 5 can come up heads, that means there is a 1 in 32 chance this will happen.

Answer 5

Probability of a head is 1/2 on one toss of a coin (50-50 as you said)

If you toss the coin 5 times, probability of 5 heads is

(1/2)^5 = 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/32

Answer 6

(1/2) ^ 5 = 1/32
(1/2) ^ 50 = 1/(a heck of a lot)

Each flip is independent of the previous one when you do the flipping, so no matter how many heads you get previously, the chance of you getting another head on your next flip is 1/2.

But if you want to compute the probability before you do any flips, you have to multiply the probability of each heads. A way to visualize it is by drawing a branch diagram.


.................../ heads
........heads
......./..........\ tails
flip1
.......\......./heads
........tails
...............\tails

And so on.

Answer 7

1/2^5 = 1/32

Answer 8

the chances of flipping 5 heads in a row ....


0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.03125


for 50 times....

(0.5)^50 = 8.8817842 × 10^-16

(or .00000000000000088817842)

same for tails :-)

Answer 9

Use this equation: (1/2) / X
One half divide by X. Replace X with any number.

Answer 10

(1/2)^number of throws