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Fair 50-50 outcome from a coin of unknown bias

Question

A coin comes up heads with some unknown probability pp strictly between 00 and 11. Using only this coin, how can you produce an outcome that is exactly 50-50?

Short answer

Toss twice: HT means one outcome, TH the other, and on HH or TT start again. Both HT and TH have probability p(1−p)p(1-p), so they are equally likely (von Neumann's trick). Each round succeeds with probability 2p(1−p)2p(1-p), so the expected number of tosses is 1p(1−p)\tfrac{1}{p(1-p)}.

Adapted from Zhou, A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews, sec. 4.3 Conditional Probability and Bayes' Formula, 'Fair probability from an unfair coin', p.74; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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