In our present day, an important issue that has confronted individuals in all levels in society is that of randomized choice making. Such methods were developed gradually over the centuries, such as drawing lots, the die (dice if you're really serious), magic 8-balls, and the like. But for decision making of two choices, the universally accepted mechanism of random generation is the coin. The functioning of the coin is simple; the coin, at least the ones I know of, has two sides, made distinguishable by a picture of a head on one side and a picture of something that is not a tail on the other. Quite obviously, these sides can be called "heads" or "tails", respectively. Upon being tossed in a manner such that it also spins about an approximately horizontal axis through a diameter, the coin will land, with a half chance of landing on the heads side, and a half chance of landing on the side that does not have a tail. Some people have made ridiculous claims regarding how the chances are not actually even, and that by not having a tail on one side, some aerodynamic effects cause one side to be favoured. Those people are probably the sort who also think airplanes work and helicopters can fly and contract mad cow disease. Please ignore them. More absurd are the claims that a coin can land on an edge, which is greater than or equally preposterous.
However, the idea of using a coin to make double-choiced decisions has a particular difficulty, namely in the assigning of choices to faces of the coin. Sometimes the choice is obvious (e.g. whether to dissect the head or the tail of a bird first (look I'm not a biologist; who knows what they do in their labs)), but most of the time the choice is less straightforward. There are the few fortunate gifted individuals who can make on-the-fly arbitrary assignments of this sort instantly, but those are few indeed. Opponents of the coin-flipping method maintain that this difficulty devalues the efficiency of the entire process and ridicule the seriousness assigned to this task. Those are probably the types of people who can somehow make decisions in a non-randomway, and we will have nothing to do with them.
In light of this difficulty then, I propose the following coin-flipping protocol (CFP, not to be confused with certified financial planner or chlorofluoropentane):
Firstly, a coin must be selected. Seasoned CFP practitioners will have a coin they assign for this particular purpose that is easily distinguishable from the other coins in their wallet, for example one that is of a different currency than the one commonly used. However, if you do not have such a designated coin, then the situation is more complicated. If you have a unique coin that is of less monetary value than all the other coins, then that one should be used; if there are multiple coins of the least value, the one with the oldest date should be used. If this fails to single out a coin, then take the group that is left and head to a store; purchase an item that is worth the group of coins combined minus one, and use the one that is returned by the cashier. Or introduce CFP to the cashier and ask for advice on the matter if such an item cannot be found.
All binary decisions, by definition, are that between two choices. We will consider first the important subset of which are action/inaction decisions (AI, not to be confused with artificial intelligence, airborne interception, or Articuno invasion). These are decisions concerning whether to perform an action or not (e.g. whether to go to class or not). There is some difficulty associated with defining one as the action, as in some circumstances the inaction can be viewed as the action, and the action as not performing the inaction. Thus we define inaction as whatever is being currently performed at the time of the decision. Thus, not going to class is the inaction, as the student is not in class when the idea of going to class strikes him. Likewise, if the student is in class and wants to leave, staying in class is the inaction.
Now, we consider the general case. We wish to name the two choices to be decided upon; the naming for the AI case is simple, as we assign the names "action" and "inaction" appropriately. If the selection is between two things with given names, then the names can be used. For example, "ruby" and "sapphire" for deciding on whether to play Ruby or Sapphire, "apple" and "orange" for deciding whether to eat an apple or orange (but compare them at your peril), "two" and "three" for deciding whether to include two examples or three examples of the naming mechanism in the general CFP. In the rare circumstance that obvious names do not present themselves, simply go outside, present your case to the first stranger you meet and ask him or her for advice.
Now that the choices are named, the procedure is trivially simple. Assign "heads" to the name that comes first alphabetically, and "tails" to the name that comes last. This is logical as "heads" comes before "tails". The astute reader will note that "action" will always be assigned to "heads" and "inaction" to "tails".
There are certain cases in which the decision could either be treated as a general case or an AI case. For example. let's say you are playing Ruby and wonder if you should stop and play Sapphire. This could be viewed by some as a decision between Ruby and Sapphire, and by others as a decision to keep on playing or change. In this case, a preliminary coin-flip can be used to determine whether the "AI" naming scheme or "general" naming scheme should be employed. There is a theorem that states that all ambiguities in the process can be decided in a finite number of coin-flips, which we state here without proof.
This then, is my proposed basic coin-flipping protocol. While coin-flipping is limited to binary decisions with equal weighting, it will suffice and be an invaluable tool in life. The expert, who must make many decisions rapidly, are armed with reams of weighted coins and dice, easily accessible from a multi-compartment desk. But for us laymen who must settle the occasional decision in life, the single-coin CFP, hopefully, will prove sufficient.
