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Logical

(22,457 posts)
Wed Jul 8, 2015, 10:16 PM Jul 2015

The chances are, after a deck of cards are shuffled, the order of that deck is unique in history!

So you could make history tonight......Shuffle a deck of cards!

Meaning, in the history of the world, the shuffle you just did is most likely the first time that order of cards has ever happened!

The reason for this is that there are exactly 52 factorial (expressed in shorthand as 52!) possible orderings of the cards in a 52-card deck. This is approximately 8×1067 possible orderings or specifically 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 possibility's of different shuffled decks!

One fact I read was: If everyone on Earth shuffled a deck of cards properly randomly a billion times a year for a billion years, they wouldn't stand a chance of shuffling the same arrangement twice.

I thought this was amazing!!

Here are a couple of links that have more detail:

http://lookingglassclub.tumblr.com/post/24120741668/astounding-fact-1-a-shuffled-deck-of-cards-is-unique
http://www.matthewweathers.com/year2006/shuffling_cards.htm

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