A rule of thumb for riffle shuffling
Probability
2020-03-05 v1 Combinatorics
Abstract
We study how many riffle shuffles are required to mix n cards if only certain features of the deck are of interest, e.g. suits disregarded or only the colors of interest. For these features, the number of shuffles drops from 3/2 log_2(n) to log_2(n). We derive closed formulae and an asymptotic `rule of thumb' formula which is remarkably accurate.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0908.3462,
title = {A rule of thumb for riffle shuffling},
author = {Sami Assaf and Persi Diaconis and K. Soundararajan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0908.3462},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
27 pages, 5 tables