From: "Andrew " <xxx@yyy.edu>
To: <nmsrdaveATswcp.com>
Subject: Mind reading
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 20:23:36 -0600

In short, it's just probability, right? There's a very similar card trick. Take a deck, and remove all the jokers and face cards (aces are one). Shuffle. Tell the person whose mind you're going to "read" to think of a number between one and ten, but not to tell you. You're going to start flipping over cards. When you flip over the card corresponding to the person's number (he thought of 5, so the corresponding card would be the fifth card), the number on the card becomes his new number (so, if the fifth card is a 7, his new number is seven). Now, you keep flipping, and he starts counting again, and so on, with him adopting the number of each corresponding card as his new number. When you get to the end of the deck, you'll stop and ask if the card you just flipped over was the one he was waiting for. Odds are, it will be. How do you know which card to pick? You do the same thing he does - picking a number between 1 and 10, waiting for the corresponding card, etc. Although the odds are very slim that you'll start with the same number, the odds are quite good that each of your sequences will converge on the same number.

Cool trick, though.