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Related papers: The combinatorics of biased riffle shuffles

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This paper is about the following question: How many riffle shuffles mix a deck of card for games such as blackjack and bridge? An object that comes up in answering this question is the descent polynomial associated with pairs of decks,…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Mark Conger , D. Viswanath

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 study a family of maps from $S_n \to S_n$ we call fixed point homing shuffles. These maps generalize a few known problems such as Conway's Topswops, and a card shuffling process studied by Gweneth McKinley. We show that the iterates of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-20 Jonathan Parlett

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

Recently Wilson [Ann. Appl. Probab. 14 (2004) 274--325] introduced an important new technique for lower bounding the mixing time of a Markov chain. In this paper we extend Wilson's technique to find lower bounds of the correct order for…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Johan Jonasson

We study the "top-to-random-and-reverse shuffle", defined as the top-to-random shuffle in the symmetric group algebra composed with the permutation $w_0$ (which sends each $i$ to $n+1-i$). More generally, we analyze the composition of any…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-12 Darij Grinberg , Jonathan Parlett

We relate shuffle algebras, as defined by Nichols, Feigin-Odesskii and Rosso, to perverse sheaves on symmetric products of the complex line (i.e., on the spaces of monic polynomials stratified by multiplicities of roots). More precisely, we…

Algebraic Topology · Mathematics 2020-01-14 Mikhail Kapranov , Vadim Schechtman

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…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-03-05 Sami Assaf , Persi Diaconis , K. Soundararajan

The best known lower and upper bounds on the mixing time for the random-to-random insertions shuffle are $(1/2-o(1))n\log n$ and $(2+o(1))n\log n$. A long standing open problem is to prove that the mixing time exhibits a cutoff. In…

Probability · Mathematics 2015-03-19 Eliran Subag

Motivated by Bourque and Pevzner's simulation study of the parsimony method for studying genome rearrangement, Berestycki and Durrett used techniques from random graph theory to prove that the minimum parsimony distance after iterating the…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Jason Fulman

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-12-31 Steve Butler , Persi Diaconis , Ron Graham

We investigate permutations in terms of their cycle structure and descent set. To do this, we generalize the classical bijection of Gessel and Reutenauer to deal with permutations that have some ascending and some descending blocks. We then…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2009-09-01 Jacob Steinhardt

The *somewhere-to-below shuffles* are the elements \[ t_{\ell} := \operatorname{cyc}_{\ell}+\operatorname{cyc}_{\ell,\ell+1}+\operatorname{cyc}_{\ell,\ell+1,\ell+2}+\cdots+\operatorname{cyc}_{\ell,\ell+1,\ldots,n} \] (for $\ell \in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-19 Darij Grinberg

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…

Probability · Mathematics 2020-12-10 Oliver Matheau-Raven

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

The overhand shuffle is one of the ``real'' card shuffling methods in the sense that some people actually use it to mix a deck of cards. A mathematical model was constructed and analyzed by Pemantle [J. Theoret. Probab. 2 (1989) 37--49] who…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Johan Jonasson

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…

Probability · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Saul Jacka , Jon Warren

In this paper, we introduce certain new features of the shuffle algebra, that will allow us to obtain explicit formulas for the isomorphism between its Drinfeld double and the elliptic Hall algebra.

Quantum Algebra · Mathematics 2014-01-28 Andrei Negut

This note is based on the original proof of the shuffle conjecture by Carlsson and Mellit (arXiv:1508.06239, version 2), which seems to be too concise for the combinatorial community. James Haglund spent a semester to check through the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-06-01 James Haglund , Guoce Xin

We develop a combinatorial and order-theoretic framework for shuffles, understood as ordered concatenations of indexed families of sequences that induce total orders on the natural numbers. Motivated by the classical \v{S}arkovski\u{i}…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-03 João Dias , Bruno Dinis , Carlos Correia Ramos