this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
130 points (98.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43963 readers
1135 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In one of Vsauce's videos he suggested a good visualisation of the number of unique shuffles of a deck of cards that was originally suggested by Scott Czepiel.
Imagine you have a friend that is shuffling a deck of cards and ordering the deck uniquely every second. Also imagine that every action you take is completed instantaneously.
You stand on the equator. Wait a billion years. Then take a step. Wait another billion years. Then take another step. Continue this until you have got back to where you started.
Then take 0.02ml from the Pacific Ocean. Wait another billion years. Then take a step. Continue until you get back to where you started and take another drop out of the Pacific Ocean.
Repeat this process until the entire Pacific Ocean is empty. Then place a sheet of paper on the ground at sea level.
Refill the ocean and repeat - wait a billion years between steps as you walk around the equator, take a drop of water out of the Pacific Ocean every time you get back to where you started and place a piece of paper on the ground in a tower before refilling the Pacific Ocean and repeating.
When the tower of paper reaches the sun do you think that your friend has managed to produce each, unique ordering of the cards?
Nope! Not even close...
If you were to repeat all of the above 3000 times, then he'd be pretty much done.
Source