The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.
--
Chapter Twenty-Five, "The Delphic Future", p. 465Alan Greenspan
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In American culture the coin toss is the paradigm of the random event. A coin toss decides who kicks off the Super Bowl. Looked at another way, a coin toss is not random at all. It is physics.
William Poundstone
Before the end of October, 1839, I had an opportunity of selling out my stock of goods to a couple of English merchants, which relieved me from the delays, to say nothing of the inconveniences attending a retail trade: such, for instance, as the accumulation of copper coin, which forms almost the exclusive currency in petty dealings. Some thousands of dollars' worth are frequently accumulated upon the hands of the merchant in this way, and as the copper of one department is worthless in another, except for its intrinsic value, which is seldom more than ten percent of the nominal value, the holders are subjected to a great deal of trouble and annoyance.
Josiah Gregg
Punishments and rewards are two sides of the same coin and that coin doesn't buy you much.
Alfie Kohn
In reality, during the continuance of any one regulated proportion, between the respective values of the different values of the different metals in the coin, the value of the most precious metal regulates the value of the whole coin.
Adam Smith
To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. That a pitched coin should sometimes turn up heads and sometimes tails calls for no particular explanation; but if it shows heads every time, we wish to know how this result has been brought about. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Greenspan, Alan
Greenwell, Dora
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