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Best Card Trick PDF
Best Card Trick PDF
Best Card Trick PDF
2This sort of "Purloined Letter" style hiding of information in plain sight is a cornerstone of magic. From that point of view, the "real" version of the five-card trick se-
cretly communicates the missing bit of information; Persi Diaconis tells me there was a discussion of ways to do this in the late 1950s. For our purposes we'll ignore
these clever but non-mathematical ruses.
3Unpaid advertisement: for more information on this outstanding, intense, and enlightening introduction to mathematical thinking for talented high-school students, con-
tact David Kelly, Natural Science Department, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA 01002, or dkelly@hampshire.edu.
4For some reason t personally find it easier to encode and decode by scanning for the position of a given card: place the smallest card in the left/middle/right position
to encode 12/34/56, respectively, placing medium before or after large to indicate the first or second number in each pair. The resulting order sml, slm, msl, Ism, mls,
Ims is just the lex order on the inverse of the permutation.
5If your goal is to confound instead, it is too transparent always to put the suit-indicating card first. Fitch recommended placing it (i mod 4)th for the ith performance
to the same audience.
10 THE MATHEMATICALINTELLIGENCER
Generalize n o w to a deck with d b o u n d of n! + n - 1, this is a square card is straightforward: take 5p + ( - s
cards, from which you draw a hand of matrix, and has exactly n! l ' s in each m o d 5) and add 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 to ac-
n. Calculating as above, there are row and column. We conclude that c o u n t for skipping the cards that ap-
d(d - 1) 9 9 9 (d - n + 2 ) p o s s i b l e mes- some subset of these l ' s forms a per- pear in the message, s
sages, and (gn) possible hands. The mutation matrix. But this is precisely a Having performed the 124-card ver-
trick really is impossible (without sub- strategy for me a n d m y lovely assis- sion, I can report that with only a little
terfuge) if there are more hands t h a n t a n t - - a bijection b e t w e e n hands and practice it flows quite nicely. Berlekamp
messages, i.e., unless d -< n! + n - 1. messages which can be used to repre- mentions that he has also performed the
The r e m a r k a b l e t h e o r e m is that this sent them. Indeed, by the above para- trick with a deck of only 64 cards, where
u p p e r b o u n d o n d is always attainable. graph, there is n o t j u s t one strategy, the audience also flips a coin: after see-
While we calculated that there are but at least n!. ing four cards the performer both names
enough messages to encode all the the fifth and states whether the coin
hands, it is far from obvious that we Perfection came up heads or tails. Encoding and de-
can match t h e m up so each hand is en- Technically the above proof is con- coding work just as before, only now
coded by a message using only the n structive, in that the proof of Hall's w h e n we delete the four cards used to
cards available! But we can; the n = 5 Marriage theorem is itself a construc- transmit the message, the deck has 60
trick, which we can do with 52 cards, tion. But with n = 5 the above matrix cards left, not 120, and the extra bit en-
can be done with a deck of 124. I will has 225,150,024 rows a n d columns, so codes the flip of the coin. If the 52-card
give a n algorithm in a moment, b u t first there is room for improvement. More- version becomes too well known, I may
an interesting n o n c o n s t r u c t i v e proof. over, we would like a workable strat- need to resort to this variant to stay
The Birkhoff-von N e u m a n n theorem egy, one that we have a chance at per- ahead of the crowd.
states that the convex hull of the per- forming without consulting a cheat And finally a combinatorial question
mutation matrices is precisely the set of sheet or scribbling o n scrap paper. The to which I have no answer: h o w many
doubly stochastic matrices: matrices perfect strategy b e l o w I learned from strategies exist? We p r o b a b l y ought to
with entries in [0,1] with each row and Elwyn Berlekamp, a n d I've b e e n told c o u n t equivalence classes modulo
column s u m m i n g to 1. We will use the that Stein Kulseth and Gadiel Seroussi r e n u m b e r i n g the underlying deck of
equivalent discrete statement that any came up with essentially the same one cards. Perhaps we should also ignore
matrix of nonnegative integers with independently; likely others have done composing a strategy with arbitrary
constant row and column sums can be so too. Sadly, I have n o information o n p e r m u t a t i o n s of the m e s s a g e - - s o two
written as a s u m of permutation matri- whether Fitch Cheney thought about strategies are equivalent if, o n every
ces. 6 To prove this by induction (on the this generalization at all. hand, they always choose the same
constant sum) one need only show that Suppose for simplicity of exposition card to r e m a i n hidden. Calculating the
any such matrix is entrywise greater that n = 5. Number the cards in the deck p e r m a n e n t of the a f o r e m e n t i o n e d
than some permutation matrix. This is 0 through 123. Given a hand of five cards 225,150,024-row matrix seems like a
an application of Hall's Marriage theo- CO < el < C2 < C3 < C4, my assistant will bad way to begin. Is there a good one?
rem, which states that it is possible to choose ci to remain hidden, where i =
arrange suitable marriages b e t w e e n n Co + cl + c2 + c3 + c4 mod 5. Acknowledgments
m e n and n w o m e n as long as any col- To see how this works, suppose the Much credit goes to Art B e n j a m i n for
lection of k w o m e n can concoct a list of message consists of four cards which popularizing the trick; I t h a n k him,
at least k m e n that s o m e o n e among sum to s m o d 5. T h e n the hidden card Persi Diaconis, and Bill Cheney for
them considers an eligible bachelor. Ap- is congruent to - s + i m o d 5 if it is ci. sharing what they k n e w of its history.
plying this to our nonnegative integer This is precisely the same as saying In helping track Fitch Cheney from his
matrix, we can marry a row to a c o l u m n that if we r e n u m b e r the cards from 0 Ph.D. through his m a t h e m a t i c a l career,
only if their c o m m o n entry is nonzero. to 119 by deleting the four cards used I owe thanks to Marlene Manoff, Nora
The constant row and column sums en- in the message, the hidden card's n e w Murphy, Geogory Colati, Betsy Pittman,
sure that any k rows have at least k n u m b e r is c o n g r u e n t to - s mod 5. Now a n d Ethel Bacon, collection managers
colunms they consider eligible. it is clear that there are exactly 24 pos- and archivists at MIT, MIT again, Tufts,
Now c o n s i d e r the (very large) 0 - 1 sibilities, and the p e r m u t a t i o n of the Connecticut, and Hartford, respec-
matrix with rows indexed by the four displayed cards c o m m u n i c a t e s a tively. Thanks also to my lovely assis-
( d ) hands, c o l u m n s indexed by the n u m b e r p from 0 to 23, in "base facto- tants: Jessica Polito (my wife, who
d ! / ( d - n + 1)! messages, and entries rial:" p = d l l ! + d22! + d33!, where for w o r k e d out the solution to the original
equal to 1 indicating that the cards lex order, di-< i counts how m a n y trick with me on a long winter's walk),
used in the message all appear in the cards to the right of the ( n - ith) are Benjamin Kleber, Tara Holm, Daniel
hand. When we take d to be our u p p e r smaller t h a n it. 7 Decoding the hidden Biss, and Sara Billey.