Persi Diaconis

from HandShuffle ...

Persi Diaconis is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Stanford University. He was an early winner of the MacArthurPrize? and is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is perhaps best known for his 10 years on the road as a professional magician, a career which he embarked upon by running away from home at the age of 14. His subsequent mathematical research has been in probablity theory and combinatorics and he is renowned, among other things, for his studies of card shuffling.

• The mathematics of perfect shuffles, with R. L. Graham and W. M. Kantor, Advances in Applied Math., vol. 4, 175-196 -- 1983
• Trailing the dovetail shuffle to its lair, with David Bayer, Ann. Appl. Prob., vol. 2, 294-313 -- 1992
• Analysis of Top to Random Shuffles, with Jim Fill and Jim Pitman, Combinatorics, Probability Computing, vol. 1, 135-155 -- 1992

Online resources ...

• http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/95/shuffling
• http://www.rge21.com/lib/random.htm or http://www.blackjack-adviser.com/bj30.htm
• http://www.mymagic.com/zarrow.htm
• http://www.sciencenews.org/20001021/mathtrek.asp