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title: Example All the Ways You Can Flip a Coin
---
## Example All the Ways You Can Flip a Coin

In the experiment of flipping a coin, the mutually exclusive outcomes are the coin landing either heads up or tails up.

When we flip a coin a very large number of times, we find that we get half heads, and half tails. We conclude that the probability to flip a head is 1/2, and the probability to flip a tail is 1/2.

Consider the experiment of flipping of **n** coins where we can enumerate all possible outcomes as follows, where H indicates a head, and T a tail:

* **n = 1** | H  T
* **n = 2** | HH HT  TH  TT
* **n = 3** | HHH THH HTH HHT TTH THT HTT TTT
* **n = 4** | HHHH  THHH  HHHT  THHT  HHTH  THTH  HHTT  THTT  HTHH  TTHH  HTHT  TTHT  HTTH  TTTH  HTTT  TTTT

The formula for all possible outcomes of flipping n coins is 2 to the nth power.


#### More Information:
- [Theory of Probability](http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~stte/phy104-F00/notes-2.html)