Question

Consider a game in which you flip a coin. If it comes up heads, you earn 1 point; if it comes up tails, you earn 0 points. What is the expected value of one coin flip? A. –1 B. 0 C. 0.5 D. 1

Answer 1

C. 0.5

Explanation:

Since a coin has 2 sides and there is the same probability of getting either side, then each side has a 50% or 0.5 probability. Therefore, in order to calculate the expected value of one coin flip we need to multiply the value of each side by its probability and add those values together like so...

1 * 0.5 = 0.5

0 * 0.5 = 0

Now we add these values together...

0.5 + 0 = 0.5

Finally, we can see that the expected value of one coin flip is 0.5