Magical Mathematics | Spring 2025

Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas That Animate Great Magic Tricks

Persi Diaconis and Ronald Graham

01 Mar 2025 to 21 Mar 2025
About the Book

Magical Mathematics reveals several rich mathematical ideas that can be used to drive several magical effects with cards and more.

The book is roughly in two parts, the first focused on card magic and the rest focused on magic with other artifcats, juggling, and several cool stories. In this reading, we’ll go over the first half (up to chapter 7, if all goes according to plan).

Prerequisites

Basic comfort with mathematical reasoning. No prior experience with magic is required!

Logistics
  • We meet every day (with one weekend break) according to the schedule below at 9PM IST.
  • Any changes will be announced here and on this whatsapp group.
  • Recordings from the sessions will show up here.
  • Join us on Zoom via this link or by using meeting ID 935 8362 8138 and passcode hummer.
  • Subscribe to the Google Calendar for these sessions here (if you are already on a Google account) or download an ICS file here.

Reading Schedule

Date Lecture Slides Notes Video
01 Mar, 2025 Royal Hummer
02 Mar, 2025 Back to Magic
03 Mar, 2025 The Magic of de Bruijn Sequences
04 Mar, 2025 DeBruijn with Color Patterns
05 Mar, 2025 2D deBruijn Patterns
06 Mar, 2025 DNA Sequence Analysis + Middle Layer Graph Conjecture
07 Mar, 2025 deBruijn Variant: LMH + Color Pattern Derivation
08 Mar, 2025 deBruijn Variant: Suit Grouping Variation
09 Mar, 2025 Gilbreath - Lie Detector
10 Mar, 2025 Dealing Two Impressive Poker Hands
11 Mar, 2025 Counting Gilbreath Permutations + Ultimate Principle
12 Mar, 2025 Reverse Perfect Shuffle Application: Finding Partner Card
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