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Every shuffle of a deck of cards is most likely unique (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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In fact, 99.999999% is an extremely low estimate. The number of ways that a deck of cards can be shuffled is 52! Which is equal to 8065817517094387857166063685640376697528950544088327782400000000000 possibilities.

If you shuffled cards every second from the birth of the universe until now, you still wouldn’t even come close (statistically) to getting the same arrangement twice.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42773245

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[–] 55 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Since cards start in order and the majority of shuffling is done the same method, there will be a bell curve of repeated combinations.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    If the deck began its life randomly sorted, would the statistic be true then?

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    From a production point of view I think that it would be very difficult (which generally means expensive) to create a randomised deck while ensuring that the deck has all 52 cards in it (although I’m just thinking aloud and have no experience in this area so could be wrong)

    However, if the starting deck is truly random then the output of the shuffle would also be random so there wouldn’t be a bell curve.

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