January 4, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 19, 1422

BERLIN, Jan 3: The strengthening euro might be a good bet for financial traders, but gamblers should be wary of chancing their luck — mathematicians say the new coins favour heads over tails.

Polish mathematicians Tomasz Gliszczynski and Waclaw Zawadowski and their students at the Podlaska Academy in Siedlce spun one Belgian euro coin 250 times, Germany’s Die Welt daily reported on Thursday. King Albert’s head landed facing up 140 times.

“The euro is struck asymmetrically,” Gliszczynski, who teaches statistics, told the newspaper. “I know the phenomenon from other coins like the two zloty piece, which we have thrown more than 10,000 times.”

Cent coins proved even more likely to land heads up and Gliszczynski said he hoped to perform the spinning test on German euro coins when he meets colleagues from Germany at a maths conference next month.—Reuters