Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Shuffling Shenanigans

By Ben


Using math, a magician can figure out how to find one card in a deck or how many times to shuffle the deck to really mix it up. Credit: Julie Rehmeyer

21 comments:

Cooper said...

I thought this was very interesting. I don't know if you will get the same exact card layout after 4 shuffles, but overall, I thought that having a random, unknown person running into the world's best magician should not be on the news, It's probably happened many times with other people. But, those tricks WERE pretty nifty...

Ben said...

I have actually tried this and it works!

Aaron said...

MIND BLOWN. I had no idea that the number of times that you shuffled the cards affected the playing. I need to find the trick where all of the aces end up in my deck, and a pro magician at age 14 that is AMAZING. All of the math involved must have taken ages.
-end of rant

Camille said...

This is very cool. I was like, WOW!! I agree with Aaron. MIND BLOWN definetly. I thought this was a very good article. Thanks for it Ben.

Joe said...

Well... my years of being puzzled by card tricks like that are now over. I never noticed that the magician that was performing only shuffled once or twice, and that the deck really isn't that different. I used to think that it took years and years of training just to perform that one card trick. Now I realize even I could learn to do it in a matter of months. This was so cool.

Max said...

This article is bad for magicians. Think what would happen if this article was on some important newsletter or something.

Emma said...

This is a really interesting article because it combines magic tricks, math and technology. Who would have guessed that there was so much math behind card tricks? But what makes a deck of cards truly random? I think that it might be kind of like the rock-paper-scissors game against the computer where there are patterns hidden in your moves (or deck of cards) that you didn't even try to make. Like the article said, it makes sense that for them to call a deck of cards random, the computer could only choose the right card 1 out of 52 times, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the whole deck is truly random.

Alex G. said...

This was very cool and I enjoyed reading about all the math behind the card tricks! Who knew there was so much thought behind a shuffle? This was cool and it taught me something that I had been wondering about.

Ryan said...

This was very cool and interesting article. I enjoyed reading this because it was so interesting. As Alex said who knew there was so much thought behind a shuffle? I always thought of it as a pretty simple thing.

Ben said...

This is a really cool article. However, Joe, you're wrong. I learned this trick the night I first saw this article and did it to my dad. It worked, and I did choose the right card, but it is hard because in order for it to work properly it has to be a perfect shuffle. Try it on someone you know!

Kevin said...

In this article, it says that a deck requires seven shuffles to completely mix it up. However, the initial order before the shuffling is very neat: Ace, 2, 3, 4,.... If you have just finished a game of say Crazy Eights, the initial order is semi random. I feel that this lowers the amount of shuffles required for the deck to be completely random.

Samantha Stone said...

It is good that Persi went back to school and studied math. Who knew that there was so much math behind magic tricks. How perfect, to have a hobby that brings you back to school. I found it interesting that you can shuffle cards in a particular way to ensure you get the cards you want. My hat off to the fourteen year professional magician.

Samantha said...

It is good that Persi went back to school and studied math. Who knew that there was so much math behind magic tricks. How perfect, to have a hobby that brings you back to school. I found it interesting that you can shuffle cards in a particular way to ensure you get the cards you want. My hat off to the fourteen year professional magician.

Sinclaire said...

That is so cool! I need to try this trick! I always shuffle the deck 2 or 3 times, never 7! It's very interesting what Kevin said about the cards having to be perfectly in order for it to take 7 shuffles. I wonder if after a game of Go Fish or Old Maid how many shuffles it would take to completely shuffle the deck. I wonder how long these two experiments took! I agree with Aaron that those math formulas must have taken ages to come up with. So cool!

Cypress said...

This was really cool. I want to learn how to do this trick. I never knew that shuffling a deck of cards could affect how it turned out. The sequence that resulted was really cool and how they got shorter or longer depending on the amount of time you shuffle. Wow. This was awesome.

Chloe said...

This was SO cool. It is amazing that magicians are Mathematicians (in a way). I never knew that there was so much math and thought behind a simple shuffle. I tried it on my mom and it worked. I was pretty slow with it though. Like Aaron said, I am completely MIND BLOWN!

Ava S. said...

This was a very compelling article. I never thought magic tricks required any math knowledge, but now I realize it's all about the math. I've seen people do plenty of card tricks, but I've never been able to find out how they manage to pull it off. When I see a magic show, I can sit for a long time just trying to figure out how they did the trick. And usually, I can't seem to figure it out.

Jordan said...

This article was very cool! (Notice how I did not say it was interesting to make me sound scientific (because to me, it is not interesting, since I dont even know how to shuffle a deck, and wow this is a really long parenthesis)) What is interesting is that it required so much math and technolgy for this "experiment". I agree, this must have tooken a long time to come up with the formula.

Gillian said...

This article was really cool! I only know one card trick and the things that they did here explain completely how they work! It's something along the lines of the odd one out, and it usually works. Anyway, this way really cool. Next they should do some kind of psychology thing on which card is usually the old maid. That would be the perfect cheat.

Anthony said...

Wow! This is really interesting! I already knew that you shuffle 7 times to get a complete mixed-up deck, but I thought it was amazing that the kid uses math. It just shows you that math is important! I also thought it was amazing that this kid became a professional magician at age 14. That is so young! That would be like me becoming a magician in two years! This article is bad for magicians, though; it gives away their secrets. It must take a long time to figure out magic tricks and how they work. Bravo!

Edie said...

My parents would probably not let me just pack up and become a professional magician at 14. This is such a cool article. I love when magic and math come together as mathmagic. I also want to find out how to do that trick where you end up getting all the aces. I heard from one of our good family friends who is a magician that if you shuffle a deck of 52 cards six times perfectly, it gets back to the same order. I don't know if that has to do with anything, but I just thought I'd share a cool fact. Thanks for the article Ben!