Reader question:

Please explain "flipped the coin", as in: "The director approached us about doing some camera work and we flipped a coin to see who would do it, and luckily I won!"

My comments:

This means "I" got the job because of sheer luck, not because "I" was better than others.

Here, I don't mean to put "you" down, but am merely saying what I think is a healthy way of looking at things.

It is the case at any rate, where coin flipping or coin tossing is concerned.

If you watch a soccer match, for example, before the game begins, the referee (who officiates the game, making sure players don't violate rules and that the game runs smoothly and without incident) summons the captain from each team and ask them whether they prefer to have the ball (which gives them the first kick) or the side (which gives the right to choose the sunny or less windy side of the field). And if the two captains all insist on the ball and the referee can't talk them out of it, coin flipping ensues.

The ref pulls a coin from his pocket and asks the captains to name a side he prefers.

Heads or tails, that is.

Then the ref flips the coin (let it fly and spinning from side to side) and all three men watch it fall to the ground. Heads, one team wins the ball. Tails, the other team has the ball.

All is settled.

Alright?

Hence, figuratively speaking any decision made by flipping the coin is a decision left to luck.

Oh, by the way, the coin-flipping is very important in soccer these days. It symbolizes fair play. Since coin-flipping is a 50-50 chance it is a good gesture, giving a semblance of fairness.

I said gesture, giving a semblance because it is now known that many a few matches here and in Europe have been fixed (some referees really run amok, you know, after tossing up the coin and blowing the first whistle).

However, our immediate concern is language and in language, figuratively speaking any decision made by flipping the coin is a decision left to luck.

Whether it remains correct to call that a decision is another matter, of course.

It is still a decision, of sorts, I think. What do you think? Care to flip a coin?

Anyways, here are media examples for you to see more coin-flipping in action:

1. Tommy Van Scoy was the owner of a chain of diamond jewelry stores along in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. He was also known for his odd radio commercials for his jewelry stores. He was also a championship boxer and an amateur pilot.

Van Scoy was born March 22, 1920, in Bear Creek, Pennsylvania. His mother died when he was 8 years old. In the 1930s his father a, former steelworker, had a difficult time finding work during the Great Depression. Young Van Scoy graduated from Coughlin High School and made money as a newspaper boy and as a shoeshiner. Van Scoy was a Golden Gloves boxer. In 1942 he joined the Army, where the flip of a coin ignited a new interest.

"While I was in the army, I went to San Antonio. I with two other officers and we flipped a coin to see who would pay for the movie. I lost and the coin landed on the crystal of my watch and broke it." He took the watch to a repair shop, and when the jeweler learned he was interested in the inner workings of the timepiece, the jeweler taught Van Scoy how to fix a watch.

After returning home from the military in 1945, he rented a second floor retail space in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and opened his first jewelry store. Several years later he decided he could make more money selling diamonds exclusively. He often said - I sell the same or better diamond for less!

- Tommy Van Scoy, Wikipedia.

2. An expensive wine may well have a full body, a delicate nose and good legs, but the odds are your brain will never know.

A survey of hundreds of drinkers found that on average people could tell good wine from plonk no more often than if they had simply guessed.

In the blind taste test, 578 people commented on a variety of red and white wines ranging from a ￡3.49 bottle of Claret to a ￡29.99 bottle of champagne. The researchers categorized inexpensive wines as costing ￡5 and less, while expensive bottles were ￡10 and more.

The study found that people correctly distinguished between cheap and expensive white wines only 53% of the time, and only 47% of the time for red wines. The overall result suggests a 50:50 chance of identifying a wine as expensive or cheap based on taste alone – the same odds as flipping a coin.

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at Hertfordshire University, conducted the survey at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

"People just could not tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine," he said. "When you know the answer, you fool yourself into thinking you would be able to tell the difference, but most people simply can’t."

All of the drinkers who took part in the survey were attending the science festival, but Wiseman claims the group was unlikely to be any worse at wine tasting than a cross-section of the general public.

"The real surprise is that the more expensive wines were double or three times the price of the cheaper ones. Normally when a product is that much more expensive, you would expect to be able to tell the difference," Wiseman said.

People scored best when deciding between two bottles of Pinot Grigio, with 59% correctly deciding which was which. The Claret, which cost either ￡3.49 or ￡15.99, fooled most people with only 39% correctly identifying which they had tasted.

- Expensive wine and cheap plonk taste the same to most people, The Guardian, April 14, 2011.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

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