Card Magic, Automata and Human Computation

Dr. B. Ravikumar
Sonoma State University

Stevenson 1301
12:00 PM - 12:50 PM

Some card magic tricks will be presented. The principles behind them will be explained in terms of concepts from computer science.  Finite automata, shuffle, perfect shuffle, balanced parentheses, modular arithmetic – are among the concepts used to establish the validity of the tricks. Some algorithmic questions related to memorization, mental computation etc. may also be discussed.