If I toss a fair coin 4 times, which of the following is most likely to occur?
Clarification : Each coin toss is independent to one another.
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Relevant wiki: Binomial Distribution
If we tose that coin n times, there will be 2 n possible combinations of heads and tails. If we want to find in how many of those combinations there are m heads, that just will be ( m n ) . So, the probability of had obtained m heads is 2 n ( m n ) . To maximize that when n is even, we must have m = 2 n . When n is odd, we can have m = 2 n − 1 or m = 2 n + 1 .
In this case n = 4 , so the most likely event that happened is that we got 2 heads, with a maximized probability of 1 6 6 .