Stable Fixed Points of Card Trick Functions
History and Overview
2013-08-16 v1
Abstract
The 21-card trick is a way of dealing cards in order to predict the card selected by a volunteer. We give a mathematical explanation of why the well-known 21-card trick works using a simple linear discrete function. The function has a stable fixed point which corresponds to the position where the selected card reaches at the end of the trick. We then generalize the 21(7 x 3)-card trick to a p x q - card trick where p and q are odd integers greater than or equal to three, determine the fixed point and prove that it is also stable.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1308.3396,
title = {Stable Fixed Points of Card Trick Functions},
author = {Jyoti Champanerkar and Mahendra Jani},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.3396},
year = {2013}
}