Is there a difference between drawing a random card, and mathematically generating a random card? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 months ago by swordgeek@lemmy.ca to c/askscience@lemmy.world

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OK, I had a hard time coming up with a single sentence title, so please bear with me.

Let's assume I have a computer with a perfect random number generator. I want to draw from a (electronic) deck of cards that have been shuffled. I can see two distinct algorithms to accomplish this:

Fill a list with the 52 cards in random order, and then pull cards from the list in sequence. That is, defining the (random) sequence of cards before getting them. This is analogous to flipping over cards from a the top of a well-shuffled deck.
Generate a random card from the set that hasn't been selected yet. In other words, you don't keep track of what card is going to come up next, you do a random select each time.

Programattically I can see advantages to both systems, but I'm wondering if there's any mathematical or statistical difference between them.

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[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

If it is possible over the course of the game for turn orders to be changed, or for a player to choose to draw a card, or cause another player to draw a card, then it matters in a way.

This is a fascinating wrinkle, and quite correct. (and non-obvious, I would say.)

Everything that people have been posting leans towards laying out the order ahead of time, even if there's no mathematical difference in drawing the next card.

(Unless you're not dealing with a deck of cards, but instead 50k decks at once. :-D )

this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024

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