Creating a Python Coin Flip Simulation with Functions

Learn how to build a Python program that simulates flipping a coin 100 times, calculates streaks of heads, and tracks the largest streak over multiple trials. --- This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/71575309/ asked by the user 'Rebecca Krouse' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/18500500/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/71575530/ provided by the user 'Anshumaan Mishra' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/18116417/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions. Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, latest updates/developments on topic, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: Python coin flip with functions Also, Content (except music) licensed under CC BY-SA https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/licensing The original Question post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ) license, and the original Answer post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ ) license. If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com. --- Simulating Coin Flips in Python: Track the Biggest Streak of Heads Coin flipping is a classic example of randomness in programming. Whether you’re looking to simulate a simple coin toss for fun, or you need a learning tool for understanding functions and loops, creating a Python program to coin flip can be quite rewarding. In this guide, we will walk you through the process of creating a Python program that simulates flipping a coin 100 times and then finds the largest streak of heads (H) out of 10,000 trials. Understanding the Problem You want a Python function that will flip a coin 100 times, evaluate those results to find the longest streak of heads it can achieve, and repeat this experiment a whopping 10,000 times. The key here is to use functions effectively to compartmentalize the tasks: Flip a Coin: Generate the outcome of a coin flip. Simulate Flips: Flip the coin multiple times and return the results. Count Streaks: Evaluate the results to find how many times heads appeared consecutively. Aggregate Results: Run the process multiple times and report the longest streak observed. Let's Break It Down 1. Flip the Coin The first step is to create a function that simulates a coin flip. This function should return either H for heads or T for tails randomly. [[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]] 2. Simulate Flips Next, we need a function that utilizes the flip function to generate a list of flips. This function will take the number of flips as an argument and return a list containing the outcomes. [[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]] 3. Count the Streaks To determine the longest streak of heads, we will implement a function that iterates through the list generated in the simulate function. Here, we will keep track of the current streak of heads and the maximum streak found: [[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]] 4. Main Function to Aggregate Results Finally, we will create the main function to simulate the coin flips 10,000 times. In this function, we will call our simulate function and our countStreak function to track the longest streak of heads across all trials. [[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]] 5. Put It All Together Here is the complete code for your coin flip simulation: [[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]] An Optional Optimization While the code above works fine for our needs, there's room for improvement. Instead of creating an entire list to track the flips, we can calculate the streak as we go to save time and space: [[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]] Conclusion With this simple yet effective implementation in Python, you can now simulate a coin flip, calculate streaks of heads, and determine the longest streak over countless trials. These foundational concepts of functions and loops in programming are crucial and can be applied to more complex simulations or data analysis tasks in the future. Try running the code above to see the results for yourself, and feel free to experiment by modifying the number of flips or trials to see how it affects the outcomes. Happy coding!