There are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than atoms on Earth

boing
21

Yes, but the trick works only for perfect magicians.

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22

Eight perfect Faro shuffles resets a deck to its original state :smile:

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23

Using the birthday paradox, the number of shuffles required so that the probability of getting a duplicate is about half = 1.06x10^34 card shuffles.

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24

I think there are simpler versions where someone picks a card and then the deck is cut several times but not shuffled, then the magician counts 12 cards or something

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25

God I love that show, I have watched an unhealthy amount of QI. Youtube link if you want it: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_tLKCMX0zw3kwfgqZki5rg

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26

I wish I had just a penny for every thousand different possible permutations. A nickel for every one is just being greedy.

Also, this.

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27

Aside from the hyperinflation, anybody with actual physics chops want to comment on whether your bank account would acquire an event horizon?

You specified 1 penny per thousand, so 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pennies at 2.5g each.

200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000Kg, mostly of zinc, unfortunately. What I don’t know is what the densest-packing for pennies is, and at what point gravity just says ‘the hell with your fancy “geometry”. “Densest packing = Squish”.’ Given that that value is about 2*10^20 solar masses, though, my money would be on ‘Black Hole’.

2 Likes
28

When I first meet someone I hand them a deck of cards and have them pick one. Then I announce their pick: the three of spades.

So far I’ve never gotten it right, but one day I am going to impress the HELL out of someone.

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29

The “stopped clock” trick is so much fun. When somebody says, “guess what,” I guess. One of these days I’m going to be right - and people forget the first 99 tries.

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30

This should be copied to the corrupt-a-wish thread.

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31

& put it on youtube like all the other hacks do.

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32

Er, no, it will be 10^67. n/2 does not reduce the order of magnitude by half, it can only reduce it by up to one. And, in the case of 52!, it doesn’t reduce the order of magnitude at all.

Log10[52!] ~ 67.9
Log10[52!/2] ~ 67.6

33

you’d be crushed to death under a very large pile of nickles, and would have destroyed the earth in the process. this is why wishes suck says the genie with a knowing smile. :slight_smile:

5 Likes
34

I think you misunderstood me.

i was trying to find the least n such that the probability that there is at least one pair of duplicate decks out of n randomly shuffled decks >= 0.5

P(there is at least a pair of duplicate decks out of n randomly shuffled decks)
= 1 - P(all n randomly shuffled decks are distinct)
= 1 - (1 - 1/(52!))(1 - 2/(52!))(1 - 3/(52!))…(1 - (n-1)/(52!))

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35

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem - this might help?

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36

They can just deposit it all into my account electronically. I don’t need any actual pennies.

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37

There’s no such thing as an unhealthy level of QI-watching.

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39

So how many ways are there to arrange all the atoms on Earth?

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40

http://jliat.com/APCDS/ ALL POSSIBLE CDs

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41

Dogs can’t look up.