zuhrovet: Close-up photo of a black-and-white moth in the grass (moth)
Sasha Zuhrovet ([personal profile] zuhrovet) wrote in [community profile] hexarchate_rpg 2018-02-03 09:41 pm (UTC)

jeng-zai shuffles

[Possibly, but now that you mention it, here is even more of a tangent! One can approximate a perfectly random shuffle of an n-card deck using 1.5 log2 n riffle shuffles. For a 52-card deck, that works out to around 8 shuffles. Mathematically, splitting the deck and shuffling 8 times is equivalent to cutting into 8 piles and then recombining, which is why I used to have a probability textbook with an octopus shuffling cards on the cover.

For a 78-card Tarot or jeng-zai deck, you need approximately 9.428 shuffles for near-random mixing. Rounding up to ten, that means we want a decapod for our ideal shuffling: perhaps a crab, or a crayfish.]

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting