The card guessing game: a generating function approach

DOI10.1016/J.JSC.2022.07.001MaRDI QIDQ2673994zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Tipaluck Krityakierne, Thotsaporn Thanatipanonda

Publication date 22 September 2022

Published in Journal of Symbolic Computation (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.11142

zbMATH Keywords

card shufflingcombinatoricsgenerating functionsymbolic computation

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Exact enumeration problems, generating functions (05A15) Combinatorial probability (60C05) Combinatorial games (91A46) Probabilistic games; gambling (91A60)

Abstract: Consider a card guessing game with complete feedback in which a deck of $n$ cards ordered $1,dots,n$ is riffle-shuffled once. With the goal to maximize the number of correct guesses, a player guesses cards from the top of the deck one at a time under the optimal strategy until no cards remain. We provide an expression for the expected number of correct guesses with arbitrary number of terms, an accuracy improvement over the results of Liu (2021). In addition, using generating functions, we give a unified framework for systematically calculating higher-order moments. Although the extension of the framework to $kgeq2$ shuffles is not immediately straightforward, we are able to settle a long-standing McGrath's conjectured optimal strategy described in Bayer and Diaconis (1992) by showing that the optimal guessing strategy for $k=1$ riffle shuffle does not necessarily apply to $kgeq2$ shuffles.

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Cites work

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• On card guessing game with one time riffle shuffle and complete feedback
• Proofs from THE BOOK. Including illustrations by Karl H. Hofmann
• The Automatic Central Limit Theorems Generator (and Much More!)
• The method of creative telescoping
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Cited in

(17)

• No-feedback card guessing for dovetail shuffles
• Online card games
• On card guessing game with one time riffle shuffle and complete feedback
• How to Beat Your Kids at Their Own Game
• Combinatorial aspects of flashcard games
• On the fundamental theorem of card counting, with application to the game of trente et quarante
• Bar bets and generating functions: the distribution of the separation of two distinct card ranks
• Guessing about guessing: practical strategies for card guessing with feedback
• Card guessing with partial feedback
• A simple card guessing game revisited
• Moments of the one-shuffle no-feedback card guessing game
• Order bounds for C2-finite sequences
• On card guessing games: limit law for no feedback one-time riffle shuffle
• Card guessing and the birthday problem for sampling without replacement
• On Card guessing with two types of cards
• Central limit theorem in complete feedback games
• On card guessing games: limit law for one-time riffle shuffle

Describes a project that uses

Uses Software

• CLT
• BiVariateMoms

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