How the specious randomness of coin-flipping reflects our irrational decision-making
Sunday, November 8, 2009 at 07:45PM 
CoinFlipper by Nitpak Samsen
Nitpak 'dot' Samsen studies interaction design, with a number of his recent projects being featured in Japan's recent DesignTide 2009. These are worth viewing briefly in the video below; most of his experiments involve simple control mechanisms aimed at addressing issues of limited resources.
The Buttons from nitipak samsen on Vimeo.
One of Samsen's most involving projects has had him exploring the nature of randomness, meticulously recording the effects of different conditions on on a flipped coin in an attempt to build the perfect coin-flipping device.
Coin Flipper exp from nitipak samsen on Vimeo.
Samsen has compiled the below list of factors that affect that specious randomness we associate with coin-flipping, concluding that we can in fact control the result of something we tend to think of as random:
This is, of course, an incredibly complex and (at this point) completely inimitable system of factors. This points to the fact that while Samsen is correct about our potential for control, I wrote something quite related recently on our similar capacity to make decisions rationally (read: similarly impossible).
The short of it is that in a complex world full of systems ridiculously more complicated than flipping a coin, we develop heuristics, make assumptions, call determinable things random, and behave all-around irrationally.
(Incidentally, I do think that history illustrates our increasing capacity to work within increasingly complex systems. We're in the middle of a fortuitously ideal example of this, considering that our headlong dive into overwhelming amounts of information has resulted in all the beautifully evolving systems and visualizations attempting to organize it (see: Infosthetics, Flowing Data, plenty others). So when I say "we are [at this point] completely incapable of processing such intricate systems," I'm conceding that Samsen's assertion may simply be an optimistic look at what we're capable of, with which I am in agreeance.)
