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Author Topic: The One-card Shuffle  (Read 23920 times)

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GendoIkari

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #50 on: May 17, 2016, 02:41:13 pm »
0

Somebody made a poll in the discussion that's closer in context to the one we're talking about here:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/22697738#22697738

99% say yes you can shuffle one card there...

Exactly... that's really the context that matters. We are trying to determine if a rule that happens "whenever you shuffle" happens in this case. Now as to the other point of "did the card move"; that's a good question. But I maintain still that to rule that shuffling 2 cards does move a card, while shuffling 1 card does not, you require people to count their deck every time they need to shuffle.
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #51 on: May 17, 2016, 03:20:31 pm »
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Hah, Awaclus is the only one who can't complain, but I expected others to do it. I wish you had spoken up against the question when I posted it here... I gave my reasons for why I thought it was neutral and why the one proposed by GendoIkari wasn't. Reply to that.

Quote
The thread title and poll question are 2 different questions.

Title: Can you shuffle 1 card ? (No-in a literal sense)

Poll: If you play a game with cards, and the game instructs you to shuffle your deck, and your deck only has one card in it, can you do it? (Yes-in a rules sense)


Very deceptive polling...


Not that I think you were intentionally deceptive, but I think it's a major source of the disagreement.
I replied to that in BGG:

I thought about this, because I didn't want to be deceptive. I considered pasting in the entire poll question in the thread title. But in the end actually the title is just a short-form of the question. If you think "yes" to the question, then you think you can shuffle one card. I'm probably not going to convince you, but think about it: You can apply the "rules sense" to both the title and the poll question, and you can do the same with the "literal sense" (both your terms, not mine). It's just that the different phrasings made you associate in a different way.

Anyway, in the end people read both the title and the poll question.

Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #52 on: May 17, 2016, 03:21:23 pm »
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Here at F.DS, people answered the poll with the understanding that we were talking about "the entire mishmash of rules and triggers surrounding a rulebook-instructed activity of shuffling".
Yes, that's why it was useless here.
EDIT: That guy thought I wanted to settle a rules dispute.

eHalcyon

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #53 on: May 17, 2016, 03:24:40 pm »
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Hah, Awaclus is the only one who can't complain, but I expected others to do it. I wish you had spoken up against the question when I posted it here... I gave my reasons for why I thought it was neutral and why the one proposed by GendoIkari wasn't. Reply to that.

Quote
The thread title and poll question are 2 different questions.

Title: Can you shuffle 1 card ? (No-in a literal sense)

Poll: If you play a game with cards, and the game instructs you to shuffle your deck, and your deck only has one card in it, can you do it? (Yes-in a rules sense)


Very deceptive polling...


Not that I think you were intentionally deceptive, but I think it's a major source of the disagreement.
I replied to that in BGG:

I thought about this, because I didn't want to be deceptive. I considered pasting in the entire poll question in the thread title. But in the end actually the title is just a short-form of the question. If you think "yes" to the question, then you think you can shuffle one card. I'm probably not going to convince you, but think about it: You can apply the "rules sense" to both the title and the poll question, and you can do the same with the "literal sense" (both your terms, not mine). It's just that the different phrasings made you associate in a different way.

Anyway, in the end people read both the title and the poll question.

Sure,  but you really should be pushing the "rules sense", not the "literal sense". The discussion really indicates that you failed in that.  There are a large number of comments there saying,  "I voted no because you can't physically do it, but I would count it as shuffled for rules purposes."
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #54 on: May 17, 2016, 03:30:34 pm »
0

Somebody made a poll in the discussion that's closer in context to the one we're talking about here:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/22697738#22697738

99% say yes you can shuffle one card there...
I replied to that post too! "The problem with your question is that it implies that it's the choice of shuffling that gives you a red cube."

Also, I think that the crowd who reads a discussion like that one and gets to page 5, is totally different from the crowd who just reads the poll question and responds. (Which is totally different from the crowd that hangs around in this forum.) I mean, less than 100 replied to that post, and that is plainly not a representative sample of the 800 who replied to my poll. Those 800 are the closest we'll get to regular gamers, without going around asking people in game stores and on cons. If we did that, we would get an even more useful result, because then we wouldn't just get gamers who use BGG, who are more hardcore. I would expect it to be even more people voting "no" then.

Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #55 on: May 17, 2016, 03:55:32 pm »
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Sure,  but you really should be pushing the "rules sense", not the "literal sense". The discussion really indicates that you failed in that.  There are a large number of comments there saying,  "I voted no because you can't physically do it, but I would count it as shuffled for rules purposes."

What does that have to do with the difference between the thread title and the poll question? Are you saying the problem is that people read the thread title and not the question?

In any case, I found three such posts, not a "large number". I did write on the first page (8th post) that a game effect would trigger when you shuffle. I concede that some responders made that distinction in the wrong way though.

But I also found posts saying this or similar: Context is super important here. In a vacuum though, I would so "yes."

And this post says something true. Many people who replied to that poll on page 5 probably just thought about whether an effect that triggers at a certain time in the game when you normally shuffle, should trigger.

The bottom line is that I don't know a better way to ask the question.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2016, 04:00:30 pm by Jeebus »
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #56 on: May 17, 2016, 04:06:19 pm »
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But I maintain still that to rule that shuffling 2 cards does move a card, while shuffling 1 card does not, you require people to count their deck every time they need to shuffle.
And I still don't understand your point. Why does it matter if you count your deck?

GendoIkari

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #57 on: May 17, 2016, 04:18:46 pm »
+2

But I maintain still that to rule that shuffling 2 cards does move a card, while shuffling 1 card does not, you require people to count their deck every time they need to shuffle.
And I still don't understand your point. Why does it matter if you count your deck?

Because the rules don't require you to count your deck. Of course you could update the rules to include that, but what a weird rule it would be. Instead of "shuffle your deck", suddenly you would have "count your deck. If you have more than 1 card in your deck, shuffle it." I mean, you wouldn't have to spell it out fully that way, but the rule of what defines "shuffling" would cause that to be how you must shuffle.
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #58 on: May 17, 2016, 04:37:57 pm »
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Because the rules don't require you to count your deck. Of course you could update the rules to include that, but what a weird rule it would be. Instead of "shuffle your deck", suddenly you would have "count your deck. If you have more than 1 card in your deck, shuffle it." I mean, you wouldn't have to spell it out fully that way, but the rule of what defines "shuffling" would cause that to be how you must shuffle.
Ok, I get it now. But why do you have to count to know that you have one card? It's not entirely clear that you can't just know that without counting.
What about checking for empty piles? The rules don't require you to count then either, but you if you have to count to 1, you have to count to 0.

GendoIkari

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #59 on: May 17, 2016, 04:44:08 pm »
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Because the rules don't require you to count your deck. Of course you could update the rules to include that, but what a weird rule it would be. Instead of "shuffle your deck", suddenly you would have "count your deck. If you have more than 1 card in your deck, shuffle it." I mean, you wouldn't have to spell it out fully that way, but the rule of what defines "shuffling" would cause that to be how you must shuffle.
Ok, I get it now. But why do you have to count to know that you have one card? It's not entirely clear that you can't just know that without counting.

I said at some point in the beginning of this that it's an issue of having to "know intuitively".
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What about checking for empty piles? The rules don't require you to count then either, but you if you have to count to 1, you have to count to 0.

Great point; I have no counter.
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singletee

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #60 on: May 17, 2016, 04:45:15 pm »
+2

What about checking for empty piles? The rules don't require you to count then either, but you if you have to count to 1, you have to count to 0.

In that case you aren't counting, you're visually distinguishing between a card and the surface of a table. Like, does the spot I'm looking at more resemble Province or wood grain?

eHalcyon

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #61 on: May 17, 2016, 04:53:12 pm »
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Somebody made a poll in the discussion that's closer in context to the one we're talking about here:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/22697738#22697738

99% say yes you can shuffle one card there...
I replied to that post too! "The problem with your question is that it implies that it's the choice of shuffling that gives you a red cube."

Also, I think that the crowd who reads a discussion like that one and gets to page 5, is totally different from the crowd who just reads the poll question and responds. (Which is totally different from the crowd that hangs around in this forum.) I mean, less than 100 replied to that post, and that is plainly not a representative sample of the 800 who replied to my poll. Those 800 are the closest we'll get to regular gamers, without going around asking people in game stores and on cons. If we did that, we would get an even more useful result, because then we wouldn't just get gamers who use BGG, who are more hardcore. I would expect it to be even more people voting "no" then.

I don't think the question implies that at all.  It says you have a choice, then an effect depending on what you actually did, not depending on the choice itself.  But if you want, you could rephrase that question to be clearer about that distinction.

And sure, the people who are that far into discussion are a different crowd.  If that question had been the OP, I'd expect something closer to what we saw here on f.ds, with an 80/20 split instead of 99/1.

Sure,  but you really should be pushing the "rules sense", not the "literal sense". The discussion really indicates that you failed in that.  There are a large number of comments there saying,  "I voted no because you can't physically do it, but I would count it as shuffled for rules purposes."

What does that have to do with the difference between the thread title and the poll question? Are you saying the problem is that people read the thread title and not the question?

In any case, I found three such posts, not a "large number". I did write on the first page (8th post) that a game effect would trigger when you shuffle. I concede that some responders made that distinction in the wrong way though.

But I also found posts saying this or similar: Context is super important here. In a vacuum though, I would so "yes."

And this post says something true. Many people who replied to that poll on page 5 probably just thought about whether an effect that triggers at a certain time in the game when you normally shuffle, should trigger.

The bottom line is that I don't know a better way to ask the question.

My point is that your methodology was no good.  You asked a question and many of the people didn't understand the context.  The title was completely devoid of context, which confuses things, but even the poll question itslf isn't very clear about it.

I think the question needs to make it clear that this is about the abstract, technical rules concept of "shuffling" rather than the physical aspect.  Does it count as "shuffled" in the game, even if you only have 0 or 1 card in your deck?

Quote
What about checking for empty piles? The rules don't require you to count then either, but you if you have to count to 1, you have to count to 0.

Great point; I have no counter.

In a technical sense, "check that the pile is empty" is accomplished by counting the pile and returning true if the count is 0.
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #62 on: May 17, 2016, 06:21:43 pm »
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And sure, the people who are that far into discussion are a different crowd.  If that question had been the OP, I'd expect something closer to what we saw here on f.ds, with an 80/20 split instead of 99/1.
Ok, I think I've said enough on the subject now. Regarding what results you'd expect, it's of course very different from what I would expect, but we have no way of knowing of course. But I'll note one seeming contradiction in your post. You agree that the people that far into the discussion on BGG are a different crowd, but equate the people who replied to my poll with the people here on f.ds (since you'd expect them to answer the same with the "proper" question). Do you really think it's the same kind of crowd?

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #63 on: May 17, 2016, 06:24:52 pm »
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In that case you aren't counting, you're visually distinguishing between a card and the surface of a table. Like, does the spot I'm looking at more resemble Province or wood grain?
You're grasping at straws. Look: The rules say you may keep the Traveller piles that belong together in one pile. You can't exchange a Warrior if there is no Hero in the pile. You have to pick up the pile and count. The rules don't require you to count, but you have to.

singletee

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #64 on: May 17, 2016, 06:33:34 pm »
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In that case you aren't counting, you're visually distinguishing between a card and the surface of a table. Like, does the spot I'm looking at more resemble Province or wood grain?
You're grasping at straws. Look: The rules say you may keep the Traveller piles that belong together in one pile. You can't exchange a Warrior if there is no Hero in the pile. You have to pick up the pile and count. The rules don't require you to count, but you have to.
Why are we talking about travellers now? You aren't counting in that case either. You just have to look through the pile and see if there's a Hero. If you see one, grab it. Maybe there were 2 or 3 behind it, but you don't care.

eHalcyon

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #65 on: May 17, 2016, 06:58:15 pm »
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And sure, the people who are that far into discussion are a different crowd.  If that question had been the OP, I'd expect something closer to what we saw here on f.ds, with an 80/20 split instead of 99/1.
Ok, I think I've said enough on the subject now. Regarding what results you'd expect, it's of course very different from what I would expect, but we have no way of knowing of course. But I'll note one seeming contradiction in your post. You agree that the people that far into the discussion on BGG are a different crowd, but equate the people who replied to my poll with the people here on f.ds (since you'd expect them to answer the same with the "proper" question). Do you really think it's the same kind of crowd?

Not necessarily the same, but closer.
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #66 on: May 17, 2016, 07:17:34 pm »
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Why are we talking about travellers now? You aren't counting in that case either. You just have to look through the pile and see if there's a Hero. If you see one, grab it. Maybe there were 2 or 3 behind it, but you don't care.
Because you said that you're not counting an empty pile, you're visually distinguishing between a card and the table. In the case of Travellers, we have to look through the pile (they might not even be in order) to check if there is one or more Hero. If that's not counting, neither is looking at your deck and checking if there is no more than one card.

Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #67 on: May 17, 2016, 07:36:43 pm »
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Hah, Awaclus is the only one who can't complain, but I expected others to do it. I wish you had spoken up against the question when I posted it here... I gave my reasons for why I thought it was neutral and why the one proposed by GendoIkari wasn't. Reply to that.
Actually, GendoIkari thumbed that post, so I don't understand why he's unhappy with the question I asked in the poll. It seems a little bit like making up excuses for why it didn't go the way he expected. At least Awaclus is staying silent about it.

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #68 on: May 17, 2016, 09:13:58 pm »
+1

What if there was a card that said "While this is in play, when you shuffle your deck, +$1."  Would that trigger when you shuffle a one card deck?  I think almost everyone would agree that it would.  It's the same idea as that red cube/blue cube question.  I don't think the results to that question were significantly influenced by the fact that the card gave you a choice about whether to shuffle.

But anyway, I'm starting to agree with you that this is not at all what we care about anyway.  What we care about is whether you lose track of a card if it's the only card you're shuffling.  And I'm also starting to feel like there's not much you can say about that; either it works or it doesn't, and neither way is particularly more intuitive.  The one thing that I do think we can say about it is the argument that dane-m gave.

I guess in general it also seems better to err on the side of cards not knowing what's happening, so that you can future-proof for cards that mess with things in unexpected ways.  I wish I could come up with an example (even a totally bizarre one) but I can't imagine how any future cards could get messed up by that ruling, so maybe it's okay.  I don't know, it seems like it might be better to just be safe though.
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GendoIkari

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #69 on: May 17, 2016, 11:13:22 pm »
+1

Hah, Awaclus is the only one who can't complain, but I expected others to do it. I wish you had spoken up against the question when I posted it here... I gave my reasons for why I thought it was neutral and why the one proposed by GendoIkari wasn't. Reply to that.
Actually, GendoIkari thumbed that post, so I don't understand why he's unhappy with the question I asked in the poll. It seems a little bit like making up excuses for why it didn't go the way he expected. At least Awaclus is staying silent about it.

I thumbed the post because it's a poll that I'm directly interested in and think is a great idea for a question to ask on BGG. I didn't think about the specific wording one way or the other when thumbing it. I don't mean to complain about the wording; just to suggest that it's different than the context of all the discussion that caused such a different outcome from the poll here.

Asked my wife just now, she competely agrees with you fwiw.
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #70 on: May 17, 2016, 11:23:05 pm »
0

What if there was a card that said "While this is in play, when you shuffle your deck, +$1."  Would that trigger when you shuffle a one card deck?  I think almost everyone would agree that it would.
So if your deck is empty and you have one card in your discard pile, and you get +1 Card, people would think that you shuffled (so you get +$1)? I'm not convinced. But this exact scenario (empty deck, one in discard) seems like a very good poll question! I invite you to make it.

What about if you have no cards in your deck or discard, and get +1 Card? What would people think? (According to math, you shuffle. What if you get +3 Cards? You would get +$3 I guess.)

The one thing that I do think we can say about it is the argument that dane-m gave.
I didn't find that convincing. Remember that when you look through your discard pile, you can rearrange it. If you do, moving the top card, it's lost track of. If you rearrange, but leave the top card on top, it's not lost track of. All the game told you was, "You may look through your discard pile," which the game knows might mean that you rearrange it. Still the ability doing the tracking actually knows that the top card didn't move.

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #71 on: May 18, 2016, 04:15:20 am »
0

What if there was a card that said "While this is in play, when you shuffle your deck, +$1."  Would that trigger when you shuffle a one card deck?  I think almost everyone would agree that it would.
So if your deck is empty and you have one card in your discard pile, and you get +1 Card, people would think that you shuffled (so you get +$1)? I'm not convinced. But this exact scenario (empty deck, one in discard) seems like a very good poll question! I invite you to make it.
Coincidentally this morning I was considering a hypothetical game that contained rules along the following lines (but probably better phrased!)...

At the start of your turn draw a card from the draw pile, having first shuffled the discard pile to create a new draw pile if the draw pile was empty.  If both the draw pile and the discard pile are empty, the game ends.

How would most players react to finding the draw pile empty and only one card in the discard pile?  I really don't believe that they would exclaim "Oh no!  There's only one card in the discard pile.  I can't shuffle it to create a new draw pile.  The rules don't cover this situation.  What am I supposed to do?"  Rather I think they'd take the single card from the discard pile, treating that as being a shuffle of the single card followed by drawing it.
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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #72 on: May 18, 2016, 11:01:31 am »
0

How would most players react to finding the draw pile empty and only one card in the discard pile?  I really don't believe that they would exclaim "Oh no!  There's only one card in the discard pile.  I can't shuffle it to create a new draw pile.  The rules don't cover this situation.  What am I supposed to do?"  Rather I think they'd take the single card from the discard pile, treating that as being a shuffle of the single card followed by drawing it.
Of course they wouldn't think they couldn't create a new draw pile. But the question is whether they think it's because they can shuffle or whether they think that the obvious intent of the rules is that you create a draw pile even if you can't shuffle. A poll with your scenario and a poll with the scenario of the card "While this is in play, when you shuffle your deck, +$1" would yield different results, with more people saying "yes you do it" for your scenario. I assume you agree (even if you think both would have a majority "yes" vote)?

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #73 on: May 18, 2016, 01:04:23 pm »
0

How would most players react to finding the draw pile empty and only one card in the discard pile?  I really don't believe that they would exclaim "Oh no!  There's only one card in the discard pile.  I can't shuffle it to create a new draw pile.  The rules don't cover this situation.  What am I supposed to do?"  Rather I think they'd take the single card from the discard pile, treating that as being a shuffle of the single card followed by drawing it.
Of course they wouldn't think they couldn't create a new draw pile. But the question is whether they think it's because they can shuffle or whether they think that the obvious intent of the rules is that you create a draw pile even if you can't shuffle. A poll with your scenario and a poll with the scenario of the card "While this is in play, when you shuffle your deck, +$1" would yield different results, with more people saying "yes you do it" for your scenario. I assume you agree (even if you think both would have a majority "yes" vote)?
Yes, I think the two polls probably would get different results.  I suspect, however, that if you asked three questions, first for your scenario, then for my scenario, and then for your scenario again, at least some players would switch answers between the first and third because the second would have prompted them to accept the concept of shuffling one card.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had been following this discussion for quite a while without being entirely sure which way I inclined, but the scenario I thought of this morning convinced me that for consistency I had to agree that it was possible to shuffle one card.  The jury's still out on whether shuffling zero cards counts as shuffling, but my mathematical leanings cause me to be influenced by whoever it was that pointed out that zero factorial is defined.  Maybe a poll of mathematicians would give a different to one of the general populace!

EDIT: It was Drab Emordnilap who pointed out that shuffling is merely selecting one of the N! possible orderings of N cards.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2016, 01:06:30 pm by dane-m »
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Jeebus

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Re: The One-card Shuffle
« Reply #74 on: May 18, 2016, 02:43:56 pm »
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Maybe a poll of mathematicians would give a different to one of the general populace!
Absolutely, and that has been one of my main points. This forum has an over-representation of math nerds, so of course you will get a reply heavily towards the mathematically correct answer.
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