Did you notice I was gone?
We’ve been decorating (I’m sure I’ve mentioned that before) and our latest job is the kitchen. Unfortunately magic isn’t real and I just can’t click my fingers so it is done. At the same time I’ve had a lot of magic work so it’s been pretty hectic and the blog has had to wait.
One of the best (and worst) things about the internet is finding things you aren’t really looking for. Today I stumbled on [this page ->http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/cs4fn/mathemagic/brentmorris.php] which talks about the link between perfect shuffles (faro shuffles) and maths. A good accidental discovery.
Now, this is a little technical but very powerful. You can send a card to any position in the deck using a sequence of perfect shuffles. Of course, you have to be able to perform a sequence of perfect shuffles and understand binary to do it. It’s not impossible, but quite a lot of work to do for the result and there are other methods, arguably less difficult, which can achieve the same thing.
But it is useful to know these things. I use perfect shuffles in a few card tricks, but not to this level which requires a lot of precision - which can be difficult in real life performing situations.