Comment Re:Works out just fine (Score 0, Offtopic) 171
You can find him on Mastodon now.
You can find him on Mastodon now.
I said that to make it easier for the reader to verify that there is indeed hidden order in 7 perfect shuffles. If you want to go thru the hassle, start with a what you believe is a random deck, and write down on paper each card in order, and then do the perfect shuffle as described above 7 times, and then compare the order to what you wrote down on paper.
As to a card shuffling machine, I would make it do my description of perfect shuffle, but do random cuts. Applies to a human shuffler too.
As in, pull a random sized chunk of cards from the near middle of the deck (say 11 to 29 cards - near quarter to near half of deck), at a random offset from the top, and then randomly place that chunk on either the bottom of the deck or on the top of the deck. Then shuffle. Rinse and repeat at least 4 times and make sure that the cuts go to both top and bottom.
You may have noticed that in my 7 perfect shuffle described above, neither the top card or the bottom card ever change. This is why there must be random cuts from middle placed on top of deck and bottom of deck. To get those cards to move in the stack. If you do not do cuts from the middle, cards near the bottom will tend to stay there, and cards near the top will tend to stay there. You have to do a random cut before each shuffle, whether the shuffle is perfect or not.
Your definition of perfect is not what I was describing.
The article also explains why seven shuffles "is just as close to random as can be" -- rendering further shuffling largely ineffective.
Is not accurate.
I was just noting that there is hidden order. Note that I never mentioned cutting the deck.
The means-and-ends moralists, or non-doers, always end up on their ends without any means. -- Saul Alinsky