27/05/2022
Did you know???
A fun fact for all you card players out there!
How many ways can you arrange a deck of cards?
We have 52 cards. So we choose 1 card out of 52 and fix it at position 1. We can choose any card out of 52 that means there are 52 ways to fix position 1. Now 51 cards are left. So we choose 1 card out of 51 and fix it at position 2. And again, we can choose any card out of 51 that means there are 51 ways to fix position 2. Now 50 cards are left. So we choose 1 card out of 50 and fix it at position 3. And yet again, we can choose any card out of 50 that means there are 50 ways to fix position 3. And we can do this until all the positions are fixed.
So at last we get 52*51*50…3*2*1 which is called 52! (factorial 52).
That doesn’t look so big?
Well, written in full 52! =
80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.
It is a 68 digit number.
Still not impressed?
Fact: Every time you shuffle a deck of cards, chances are that you have put them in an order that has never been seen in the history of the universe.
Still not?
Say there are 10 billion people on every planet, 1 billion planets in every solar system, 200 billion solar systems in every galaxy, and 500 billion galaxies in the universe. If every single person on every planet has been shuffling decks of cards completely at random 1 million shuffles per second since the beginning of time, every possible deck combination would still yet to have been shuffled.
Makes predicting the Markets and the Rand look easy!?
*Thanks to our friends at Currency Partners for this useless but fun fact. Contact them for all your foreign currency transactions at https://currencypartners.co.za/partner/prispek-personal/
