Re: Curious coincidence

["Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11 Jun 2000, at 20:07, Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> Well, the variance of a 0-1 coin toss is 1/2, right? So the standard
> deviation of the sum of N = 34806 independent coin tosses should be
> sqrt(N/2) = 131. 
> 
> Thus 40 ( = 80/2) is a bit better than what we would expect,
> but still not suspiciously too good, I would say.

SD makes sense only if the distribution is normal... but coin tossing 
is not a gaussian process.
What is that calculation trying to explain?
Please do not take this as an impertinent comment. I just don't 
understand what is the relation.

Cheers,

Gabriel