Last Week I Learned... 52! and WordStreak

I learned a random fact that am pretty annoyed that I had never stopped to think about especially given how much I like playing poker and the amount of math, probability, and statistics involved. When you shuffle a deck of cards, the order of the cards in the deck is statistically likely to be a combination that has NEVER EVER EVER existed! What?

When thinking about probability, to calculate the number of permutations you take the number of choices for the first slot (in this case 52) and multiply that by the number of remaining choices (51) and so on until all 52 possible slots have been filled. Or in other words there are 52 x 51 x 50....3 x 2 x 1 possible combinations. This is also known as 52 factorial and 52! is the notation.

It works out to a number of possible combinations like:

​80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000.

That is an insanely large number. It means that if there were 1 billion auto card shufflers each shuffling 1 billion decks of cards per day for 1 billion days, it would only account for (statistically) .0000000000000000000000000000000000000001 % of possible permutations. 

App Store Screenshot

Also last week, I got an email from Zynga. Normally I delete these messages because they are usually spam messages about trying some new game (I do play Words with Friends - my name is Reshan if you want to challenge me!).

But I learned about WordStreak - which is basically like tournament Boggle. Yes! The game itself is well designed (being able to swipe and drag to create words). Plus it allows two letter words and uses Scrabble letter scoring and bonuses. Very addicting and fun!

As the end of 2015 draws near I am already adjusting a few things with this routine.

First - I am going to change my mailing list to a monthly recap instead of a weekly digest. I'll put the post from each category that had the most views/tweets/shares.

Second - I am ending the Poet Laureate category (i'll keep the posts but remove the tag and category). The reason is that there is a new topic that I have decided I want to dive more deeply into...The Future of our Species. I know it sounds kind of heavy and probably too big to try and tackle on my silly blog, but I have been wrestling with this idea for the past few months now and I think I am starting to see new ways to make sense of what happens in schools and what happens in the world. More to come on Friday.