The Kruskal Count

@misc{citeulike:766463, abstract = {The Kruskal Count is a card trick invented by Martin J. Kruskal in which a magician "guesses" a card selected by a subject according to a certain counting procedure. With high probability the magician can correctly "guess" the card. The success of the trick is based on a mathematical principle related to coupling methods for Markov chains. This paper analyzes in detail two simplified variants of the trick and estimates the probability of success. The model predictions are compared with simulation data for several variants of the actual trick.}, author = {Lagarias, Jeffrey C. and Rains, Eric and Vanderbei, Robert J. }, citeulike-article-id = {766463}, eprint = {math.PR/0110143}, keywords = {arxived, fun, stochastic}, month = {Oct}, posted-at = {2006-07-20 12:06:48}, priority = {5}, title = {The Kruskal Count}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/math.PR/0110143}, year = {2001} }

TY - ELEC ID - citeulike:766463 L3 - citeulike-article-id:766463 TI - The Kruskal Count N2 - The Kruskal Count is a card trick invented by Martin J. Kruskal in which a magician "guesses" a card selected by a subject according to a certain counting procedure. With high probability the magician can correctly "guess" the card. The success of the trick is based on a mathematical principle related to coupling methods for Markov chains. This paper analyzes in detail two simplified variants of the trick and estimates the probability of success. The model predictions are compared with simulation data for several variants of the actual trick. KW - arxived KW - fun KW - stochastic AU - Lagarias, Jeffrey AU - Rains, Eric AU - Vanderbei, Robert PY - 2001/Oct/13/ UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/math.PR/0110143 ER -