A035490 Step at which card n appears on top of deck for first time in Guy's shuffling problem A035485.

0, 1, 2, 8, 5, 4, 78, 37, 6, 11, 28, 12, 349, 13, 383, 10, 18, 16, 29, 17, 33, 210, 14, 133, 32, 60, 19, 106, 57, 20, 48, 26, 21, 35, 97, 217, 25, 22, 13932, 863, 205, 54, 30452, 306, 2591, 40, 44, 39, 49, 38, 51, 47, 30, 252992198, 2253, 101, 112, 246, 402, 119, 53, 139

Offset: 1

Author

Wouter Meeussen

Keywords

• nonn
• nice

Comments

Card #1 is initially at the top of the deck and next appears at the top of the deck after 3 shuffles. Here we accept 0 as a valid number of shuffles and so we say that card #1 first shows up on top after 0 shuffles (i.e., initially). A057983 and A057984 also adopt this convention. Alternatively, we can say that card #1 first shows up on top after 3 shuffles; this leads to sequences A060750, A060751, A060752.

References

• D. Gale, Mathematical Entertainments: "Careful Card-Shuffling and Cutting Can Create Chaos," The Mathematical Intelligencer, vol. 14, no. 1, 1992, pages 54-56.
• D. Gale, Tracking the Automatic Ant and Other Mathematical Explorations, A Collection of Mathematical Entertainments Columns from The Mathematical Intelligencer, Springer, 1998.

Links

• Lars Blomberg, Table of n, a(n) for n = 1..10000
• Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, Perfect Shuffle.

Crossrefs

Cf. A035485, A035491-A035494, A060750-A060752.

Programs

Mathematica

riguy[ deck_List ] := Module[ {le=Length[ deck ]}, Flatten[ Transpose[ Reverse@ Partition[ Flatten[ {deck, le+1, le+2 } ], le/2+1 ] ] ] ]
Table[ Length[ FixedPoint[ riguy, {}, SameTest->(#2[ [ 1 ] ]=== i &) ] ]/2, {i, 2, 38} ]

UBASIC

10 input N; 20 clr time; 30 I=(N-1)\2; 40 while N>1; 50 inc I; 60 if N>I then N=2*(N-I)-1 else N+=N; 70 wend; 80 print I; time; 90 goto 10;

Extensions

Thanks to Colin Mallows, David W. Wilson, Wouter Meeussen and others for helping fill 3 lines - N. J. A. Sloane.

Additional comments from David W. Wilson, Apr 22 2001