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We introduce a new type of card shuffle called one-sided transpositions. 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 random walk on the symmetric…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-06-23 Michael E. Bate , Stephen B. Connor , Oliver Matheau-Raven

We investigate the mathematics behind unshuffles, a type of card shuffle closely related to classical perfect shuffles. To perform an unshuffle, deal all the cards alternately into two piles and then stack the one pile on top of the other.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-10-09 Cornelia A. Van Cott , Katie Wang

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…

Probability · Mathematics 2017-09-12 Megan Bernstein , Nayantara Bhatnagar , Igor Pak

We prove an $\widetilde O(n^2)$ bound for the relaxation time and the log-Sobolev time (inverse log-Sobolev constant) of the classical triangulation flip chain on a convex $(n+2)$-gon, implying a mixing time of $\widetilde O(n^2)$. The…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Vedat Levi Alev , Daniel Frishberg , Michail Sarantis , Prasad Tetali

Sampling permutations from S_n is a fundamental problem from probability theory. The nearest neighbor transposition chain \cal{M}}_{nn} is known to converge in time \Theta(n^3 \log n) in the uniform case and time \Theta(n^2) in the constant…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2012-04-17 Prateek Bhakta , Sarah Miracle , Dana Randall , Amanda Pascoe Streib

We prove an upper bound of $1.5324 n \log n$ for the mixing time of the random-to-random insertion shuffle, improving on the best known upper bound of $2 n \log n$. Our proof is based on the analysis of a non-Markovian coupling.

Probability · Mathematics 2014-12-02 Ben Morris , Chuan Qin

Consider shuffling a deck of $n$ cards, labeled $1$ through $n$, as follows: at each time step, pick one card uniformly with your right hand and another card, independently and uniformly with your left hand; then swap the cards. How long…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-11-01 Vishesh Jain , Mehtaab Sawhney

This paper considers the effect of riffle shuffling on decks of cards, allowing for some cards to be indistinguishable from other cards. The dual problem of dealing a game with hands, such as bridge or poker, is also considered. The…

Probability · Mathematics 2010-02-10 Mark Conger , Jason Howald

Consider a permutation $\sigma\in S_n$ as a deck of cards numbered from 1 to $n$ and laid out in a row, where $\sigma_j$ denotes the number of the card that is in the $j$-th position from the left.\rm\ We study some probabilistic and…

Probability · Mathematics 2012-02-10 Ross G. Pinsky

In card games, in casino games with multiple decks of cards and in cryptography, one is sometimes faced with the following problem: how can a human (as opposed to a computer) shuffle a large deck of cards? The procedure we study is to break…

Probability · Mathematics 2016-10-11 Evita Nestoridi , Graham White

We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. An ordered deck of $n$ cards labeled $1$ up to $n$ is shelf-shuffled exactly one time. One after the other a single card is drawn from the shuffled deck. The guesser makes has guess…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-24 Markus Kuba

Inspired by a common technique for shuffling a deck of cards on a table without riffling, we formalize the pile shuffle and investigate its capabilities as a sorting device. Our study is novel in that we consider pile shuffle in three…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-06-03 Kyle B. Treleaven

The mathematics of shuffling a deck of $2n$ cards with two "perfect shuffles" was brought into clarity by Diaconis, Graham and Kantor. Here we consider a generalisation of this problem, with a so-called "many handed dealer" shuffling $kn$…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2019-08-15 Carmen Amarra , Luke Morgan , Cheryl E. Praeger

We analyze the mixing time of a popular shuffling machine known as the shelf shuffler. It is a modified version of a $2m$-handed riffle shuffle ($m=10$ in casinos) in which a deck of $n$ cards is split multinomially into $2m$ piles, the…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-10-24 Andrea Ottolini , Ray Chen

We propose a model of card shuffling where a pack of cards, spread as points on a square table, are repeatedly gathered locally at random spots and then spread towards a random direction. A shuffling of the cards is then obtained by…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-06-14 Persi Diaconis , Soumik Pal

We consider a problem of shuffling a deck of cards with ordered labels. Namely we split the deck of N=k^tq cards (where t>=1 is maximal) into k equally sized stacks and then take the top card off of each stack and sort them by the order of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-03-24 Steve Butler , Ron Graham

We study mixing times of the one-sided $k$-transposition shuffle. We prove that this shuffle mixes relatively slowly, even for $k$ big. Using the recent "lifting eigenvectors" technique of Dieker and Saliola and applying the $\ell^2$ bound,…

Probability · Mathematics 2021-12-10 Evita Nestoridi , Kenny Peng

We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. An ordered deck of $n$ cards labeled $1$ up to $n$ is riffle-shuffled exactly one time. Given a value $p\in(0{,}1)\setminus\{\frac12\}$, the riffle shuffle is assumed to be…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-13 Markus Kuba

We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. A ordered deck of n cards labeled 1 up to n is riffle-shuffled exactly one time. Then, the goal of the game is to maximize the number of correct guesses of the cards, where one after…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-08-31 Markus Kuba , Alois Panholzer

We consider a Markov chain on invertible $n\times n$ matrices with entries in $\mathbb{Z}_2$ which moves by picking an ordered pair of distinct rows and add the first one to the other, modulo $2$. We establish a logarithmic Sobolev…

Probability · Mathematics 2025-09-29 Anna Ben-Hamou