Hello, I have a simple script that simulates a coin toss. I define an array with strings "heads" and "tails" and use rand to choose between these two strings. 
#!usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my %probs;
foreach( 1..10 ) { 
    print "Coin toss $_\n";
    my $value = &coin_toss;
    $probs{ $value }++;
    print "Value = $value\n\n";
}

print "Total Heads = $probs{ heads }\n";
print "Total Tails = $probs{ tails }\n";


sub coin_toss {
    my @coin = qw( heads tails );
    my $index = rand @coin;
    return $coin[ $index ];
}

[download]
My question is, is this actually random? Is there an equal percentage of choosing either value. I notice that it is very rare for me to get 5 heads and 5 tails. It could be that I am only tossing coins 10 times, is that too small? Is there a better way to do this? Thank you.

In reply to Is this really random? by dr.jekyllandme

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