The strengthening euro might be a good bet for financial traders, but gamblers should be wary. Mathematicians say the new coins favour heads over tails.
Two Polish mathematicians, Mr Tomasz Gliszczynski and Mr Waclaw Zawadowski, and their students at the Podlaska Academy in Siedlce spun one Belgian euro coin 250 times, Germany's Die Welt daily reported yesterday. King Albert's head landed facing up 140 times.
"The euro is struck asymmetrically," Mr Gliszczynski, who teaches statistics, told the newspaper. "I know the phenomenon from other coins like the two-zloty piece, which we have thrown more than 10,000 times."
Cent coins proved even more likely to land heads up, and Mr Gliszczynski said he hoped to perform the spinning test on German euro coins when he met colleagues from Germany at a maths conference next month.
While the euro notes are the same across the 12 countries, the coins display national symbols or buildings on one side and a map of Europe on the other.
The Polish mathematicians performed the test by spinning the coins on a table and not by tossing them in the air, but Mr Zawadowski said that method would have a random outcome.
- (Reuters)