The Department of Mathematics and Statistics is pleased to announce a special presentation in our colloquium series.
 

	Speaker:	Professor Robert Jernigan
	Topic:	SIMPLE MODELS OF CARD SHUFFLING
	Date:	Tuesday, November 18, 2003
	Time:	3:35 PM
	Location:	Bentley Lounge in Gray Hall

 

Description:

It is now fairly common knowledge that it takes about seven shuffles to mix a deck of 52 cards. In 1990, Bayer and Diaconis discovered that seven shuffles is a transition point, i.e. the first time that randomness is close. Their work involved sophisticated consideration of riffle shuffles, where the deck is cut into two parts and the two parts are interleaved.  This talk will include a general background of the mathematics of riffle shuffling. We will examine perfect riffle shuffles that admit a predictability that all gambler's should drool over and also consider a simple model of random shuffling due to Keller to derive results similar to the more comprehensive results of Bayer and Diaconis. This talk is particularly aimed at undergraduate students.
 
 

About Robert Jernigan:

Dr. Robert Jernigan is a full professor and a leader of the statistics program at American University. Recognized as the university's Scholar-Teacher of the Year in 1998, Dr. Jernigan is known for the clarity of his presentations, as well as a special ability to highlight statistical aspects of every day phenomena. He brings a noteworthy creativity to communicating about mathematics and statistics, and his students are familiar with many demonstrations and models that he has created for instructional purposes. From a do-it-yourself kit for creating weird dice to a flip book animation of a four dimensional hypercube, Dr. Jernigan's creations always bring interesting aspects of mathematics and statistics to life in unexpected ways.