Percentage Distribution in Deck

MaryHeather

I apologize in advance for the math nerd question, but has anyone ever calculated the percentage distribution of specific cards in the deck- like majors, minors, and court cards?

Not the N!/[N!*(N-1)]! probability, but the actual distribution. I'm curious about distribution and shifts in trends and to how it relates to acting forces in play.
 

swimming in tarot

I apologize for not being a math nerd--are you alluding to, for example, three Majors turning up in a five card spread, and the lesser statistical likelihood of that happening than a statistically "average" draw turning up?
 

rwcarter

MaryHeather said:
I apologize in advance for the math nerd question, but has anyone ever calculated the percentage distribution of specific cards in the deck- like majors, minors, and court cards?

Not the N!/[N!*(N-1)]! probability, but the actual distribution. I'm curious about distribution and shifts in trends and to how it relates to acting forces in play.
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Like Majors are 22/78ths of the deck (0.28%), Minors (not including Courts) are 40/78ths (0.51%) and Courts are 16/78ths (0.21%)?

Or are you asking something more like has anyone tracked their daily 3 card draws to see which cards come up the most and which ones never appear?

Rodney
 

MaryHeather

I've had a couple of different teachers tell me that for every 2 minors that show up in a spread, 1 major should show up. One of them said it only applies to spreads with 7 or more cards, the other said 5. I was playing with numbers and trying to figure out if there was some mathematical basis, or if they were talking about their personal experiences.

At one point, I did follow distributions in my daily spreads, but my mileage varied :| (probably the number of cards used- 4 cards most often.
 

rwcarter

Thanks for the clarification. I've never heard of any such thing. :)
 

Richard

Out of 7 cards selected at random, the mathematical expectation is that approximately 2 will be majors and 5 minors. However, this is an average over a large number of 7 card spreads. It does not mean that there is likely to be 2 majors and 5 minors in any single 7 card spread.

For 4 card spreads, the mathematical expectation is (very) roughly that 1 will be a major, and 3 minors. Again, this does not have any significance whatsoever as regards a single 4 card spread.
 

SunChariot

MaryHeather said:
I've had a couple of different teachers tell me that for every 2 minors that show up in a spread, 1 major should show up. One of them said it only applies to spreads with 7 or more cards, the other said 5. I was playing with numbers and trying to figure out if there was some mathematical basis, or if they were talking about their personal experiences.

At one point, I did follow distributions in my daily spreads, but my mileage varied :| (probably the number of cards used- 4 cards most often.
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All this would only apply of course if the cards were coming up randomly. My belief
is that that is not at all what happens in Tarot.

If you just shuffled a deck and did not ask a question and just pulled cards, mathematical equations could apply. But if you ask a question and an intelligent source (however you chose to envision that source) is sending you the correct answers via the cards, the right cards will always come up. But with no calculable pattern. Because they are not coming up randomly. Just the best cards to answer a question, which differs from question to question. Some questions the best card to answer may be a Major, to another question a Minor...and any combination therwithin that best answers the particular question asked each time.

Babs
 

JackofWands

SunChariot said:
All this would only apply of course if the cards were coming up randomly. My belief
is that that is not at all what happens in Tarot.

If you just shuffled a deck and did not ask a question and just pulled cards, mathematical equations could apply. But if you ask a question and an intelligent source (however you chose to envision that source) is sending you the correct answers via the cards, the right cards will always come up. But with no calculable pattern. Because they are not coming up randomly. Just the best cards to answer a question, which differs from question to question. Some questions the best card to answer may be a Major, to another question a Minor...and any combination therwithin that best answers the particular question asked each time.

Babs
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This is definitely one valid belief about Tarot, but I personally have never found any reason to believe that the cards don't come up randomly. And in that case, when you have a spread where the distribution deviates from what you might expect, it can be useful to remark upon that and add to your interpretation based upon the way a spread deviates from a perfectly even distribution (i.e. referring to elemental dignities that predominate). As LRichard said, looking at a large number of spreads over the course of time, the distribution of cards that come up falls into the pattern that we would expect from a perfectly random distribution--the idea of the cards showing up randomly does not mean that there have to be exactly five minors in each seven-card spread.
 

SunChariot

JackofWands said:
This is definitely one valid belief about Tarot, but I personally have never found any reason to believe that the cards don't come up randomly. And in that case, when you have a spread where the distribution deviates from what you might expect, it can be useful to remark upon that and add to your interpretation based upon the way a spread deviates from a perfectly even distribution (i.e. referring to elemental dignities that predominate). As LRichard said, looking at a large number of spreads over the course of time, the distribution of cards that come up falls into the pattern that we would expect from a perfectly random distribution--the idea of the cards showing up randomly does not mean that there have to be exactly five minors in each seven-card spread.
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I don't think we were using the word the same way. :grin: I meant random as in having no meaning behind them. As in if you did not ask a question and just pulled cards at random. They would not mean anything, no answer anything.

Babs
 
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