For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to learn how to shuffle poker chips. I’ve been trying to really nail down the perfect shuffle. This is where you get exactly one chip from the left stack, then one from the right, and so on. If you started with 4 red chips and 4 green chips
R R R R G G G G
One thought on “The perfect shuffle (psehruffefclte?)”
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I know you don’t know me, but I happened upon your site and noticed this latest entry about perfect shuffling. I found it interesting because my high school just recently hosted a math tournament, and I wrote the test with the last round involving this very subject of perfect shuffles. (I guess I would fall into the category of math geek readers, then :-p.) I agree that there are very cool things that happen with vertical symmetry; for example, when your stack has a number of chips that is 1 less than a power of 2, halfway through the shuffling, the order of the chips will reverse entirely. (I think I have that right, but I’m not sure… your shuffle is called a perfect inshuffle, but the type I dealt with is called a perfect outshuffle.) Anyways, if you’re interested in the kind of things I found, feel free to e-mail me, and I’ll e-mail you back with my findings.