Related papers: The identity is the most likely exchange shuffle f…

In the gift exchange game there are n players and n wrapped gifts. When a player's number is called, that person can either choose one of the remaining wrapped gifts, or can "steal" a gift from someone who has already unwrapped it, subject…

Let $\mathcal{S}_n$ be the symmetric group on the set $[n]:=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$. A family $\mathcal{F}\subset \mathcal{S}_n$ is called intersecting if for every $\sigma,\pi\in \mathcal{F}$ there exists some $i\in [n]$ such that…

In this thesis we introduce a new type of card shuffle called the one-sided transposition shuffle. At each step a card is chosen uniformly from the pack and then transposed with another card chosen uniformly from below it. This defines a…

In this paper we study random orderings of the integers with a certain invariance property. We describe all such orders in a simple way. We define and represent random shuffles of a countable set of labels and then give an interpretation of…

We introduce a guessing game, permutation Wordle, in which a guesser attempts to recover a hidden permutation in $S_n$. In each round, the guesser guesses a permutation (using information from previous rounds) and is told which entries of…

How many shuffles are needed to mix up a deck of cards? This question may be answered in the language of a random walk on the symmetric group, $S_{52}$. This generalises neatly to the study of random walks on finite groups, themselves a…

We construct irreducible balanced non-transitive sets of $n$-sided dice for any positive integer $n$, which was raised in \cite[Question 5.2]{SS17}. One main tool of the construction is to study so-called fair sets of dice. Furthermore, we…

In this paper we study the mixing time of a biased transpositions shuffle on a set of $N$ cards with $N/2$ cards of two types. For a parameter $0<a \le 1$, one type of card is chosen to transpose with a bias of $\frac{a}{N}$ and the other…

We characterise and enumerate permutations that are sortable by n-4 passes through a stack. We conjecture the number of permutations sortable by n-5 passes, and also the form of a formula for the general case n-k, which involves a…

Stirling permutations are parking functions, and we investigate two parking function statistics in the context of these objects: lucky cars and displacement. Among our results, we consider two extreme cases: extremely lucky Stirling…

Let G be a finite group. Let pi be a permutation from S{n}. We study the distribution of probabilities of equality a{1} a{2} ...a{n-1}a{n}=a{pi{1}}^{epsilon{1}} a{pi_{2}}^{epsilon{2}}...a{pi{n-1}}^{epsilon_{n-1}} a_{pi_{n}}^{epsilon{n}},…

Let $K_n$ denote the number of distinct values among the first $n$ terms of an infinite exchangeable sequence of random variables $(X_1,X_2,\ldots)$. We prove for $n=3$ that the extreme points of the convex set of all possible laws of $K_3$…

We consider new types of perfect shuffles wherein a deck is split in half, one half of the deck is "reversed", and then the cards are interlaced. Flip shuffles are when the reversal comes from flipping the half over so that we also need to…

Let $f(n)$ be the maximum number of steps of Topswops on $n$ cards. In this note, we report our computational experiments to determine the values of $f(18)$ and $f(19)$. By applying an algorithm developed by Knuth in a parallel fashion, we…

We define and enumerate two new two-parameter permutation families, namely, placements of a maximum number of non-attacking rooks on $k$ chained-together $n\times n$ chessboards, in either a circular or linear configuration. The linear case…

In this paper, we investigate the mixing time of the adjacent transposition shuffle for a deck of $N$ cards. We prove that around time $N^2\log N/(2\pi^2)$, the total variation distance to equilibrium of the deck distribution drops abruptly…

The Collatz map is defined for a positive even integer as half that integer, and for a positive odd integer as that integer threefold, plus one. The Collatz conjecture states that when the map is iterated the number one is eventually…

In a recent work Conger and Howald derived asymptotic formulas for the randomness, after shuffling, of decks with repeating cards or all-distinct decks dealt into hands. In the latter case the deck does not need to be fully randomized: the…

We introduce the swap-or-not shuffle and show that the technique gives rise to a new method to convert a pseudorandom function (PRF) into a pseudorandom permutation (PRP) (or, alternatively, to directly build a confusion/diffusion…

In this paper, we use the eigenvalues of the random to random card shuffle to prove a sharp upper bound for the total variation mixing time. Combined with the lower bound due to Subag, we prove that this walk exhibits cutoff at $\frac{3}{4}…