How the result of a single coin toss can turn out to be 100 heads

Christopher Ferrie, Joshua Combes

Published 2014-03-10, updated 2014-09-18Version 3

We show that the phenomenon of anomalous weak values is not limited to quantum theory. In particular, we show that the same features occur in a simple model of a coin subject to a form of classical backaction with pre- and post-selection. This provides evidence that weak values are not inherently quantum, but rather a purely statistical feature of pre- and post-selection with disturbance.