78 ? ? ?

mmm, thanks everyone for the mind refreshing mathematical Tarot intermission

elancl - this is fascinating topic : probability, statistics applied to Tarot (btw, thanks for the numbers, mind blowing). So how to calculate probability of "Does he love me?" with 3 cards spread?

I was lost 4 "replies" ago.

Wow Elancl you are a genius/math geek! I had been trying to follow the maths and was only coming up with questions (guess I'm just a generic geek).

I vote for the simple answer. If it says tarot on the box, then its a tarot! 78 cards be damned

Of course I like my tarot to have 22-23 majors (happy squirrels or unicursal hexagrams are a plus ), 4 sets of 10 minors, 16 court cards with Kings on horses and cute backs.. on the cards... not the kings.... I don't much care what the Kings backs look like! )

there's 22 numbers in that number!

elancl said:

22 card spreads 22!/0! = 1,124,000,727,777,607,680,000

Click to expand...

If this number were written as a sentence, spelled out
in words (even mathematical ones) how would it read?

And if there is no "name" for such a number, how would
it be written in math shorthand? By the way, there's 22
numbers in that number: cue the soft music and candle.

Thanks for the good work here elancl!
PS: You can compsoe in advance and then use
Cut & Paste to post ~ to avoid "timing out".

Fulgour said:

If this number were written as a sentence, spelled out
in words (even mathematical ones) how would it read?

And if there is no "name" for such a number, how would
it be written in math shorthand? By the way, there's 22
numbers in that number: cue the soft music and candle.

Thanks for the good work here elancl!
PS: You can compsoe in advance and then use
Cut & Paste to post ~ to avoid "timing out".

Click to expand...

The way lukedra wrote it 1.124000728x10^21 is the shorthand. I would probably write just 1.124x10^21 because when you're at that many digits the rest is "trivial". That would be read "one point one two four times ten to the twentyfirst power". I honestly don't know what the name would be; after trillions I don't know the names of them until you get to googol which is 10^100 (or 10 with one hundred zeroes).

Oh, bless my soul, Google is divine. 1,124,000,727,777,607,680,000 would be "one sexillion, one hundred twenty four quintillion, seven hundred twenty seven trillion, seven hundred seventy seven billion, six hundred seven million, six hundred eighty thousand". (http://g42.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=BigNumbers)

jumptothemoonyea - Tell me what cards in what positions you think answer "Does he love me?" (and there may be more than one answer), and I can work on the probabilities. Of course, really, the answer is 1, since any three cards in any of the positions answers the question! It just may not be the answer you want.

E.

PS I'm sorry I hijacked the thread taking it into the math realm. 78 cards does a Tarot make!

PPS Yes, I can compose ahead of time, but when I started that one, I didn't realize it was going to take me so long to do! Fortunately, I'd saved the actual numbers in another program, so I only have to cut and paste those.

elancl - thank you and please do not worry about 'hijacking the thread'. Though my mind stops working after 2+2=?, I think there is something in "Galileo's observation that the entire universe is written in the language of mathematics". Exploring the place where Tarot and Math intersect is very interesting and important

Back to the most important question of if he loves me, I pulled 3 cards and they are from left to right: Ace of Wands, Ace of Swords, 9 of swords. Finding the answer with mathematics is most interesting and challenging. Tarot quiz for the left brain.

jumptothemoonyea said:

elancl - thank you and please do not worry about 'hijacking the thread'. Though my mind stops working after 2+2=?, I think there is something in "Galileo's observation that the entire universe is written in the language of mathematics". Exploring the place where Tarot and Math intersect is very interesting and important

Back to the most important question of if he loves me, I pulled 3 cards and they are from left to right: Ace of Wands, Ace of Swords, 9 of swords. Finding the answer with mathematics is most interesting and challenging. Tarot quiz for the left brain.

Click to expand...

Oh, dear, you used all 78! That will make the probabilities even crazier. I will work on this and, hopefully, have an answer later today. (It's been a 6 years since I took the class, so I'm going to have to go dig out my book!)

hey atleast i got the right answer

similia said:

I vote for the simple answer. If it says tarot on the box, then its a tarot! 78 cards be damned

Click to expand...

Mind it doesn't sting you when you open the box. Some joker might be keeping his pet scorpion in there . Mind you, I am sure scorpion divination exists. 78 degrees of hopping away?

One more math excursion to complete the discussion of probabilities.

I'll use the specific cards jumptothemoonyea mentioned, but the probabilities would be the same for any cards.

The probability of pulling the Ace of Wands first is 1/78.
The probability of pulling the Ace of Swords second is 1/77 (because you didn't replace the Ace of Wands).
The probability of pulling the 9 of Swords third is 1/76 (again because you didn't replace the other two).

To find the overall probability that each separate event happens, we multiply the individual probabilities. So 1/78 * 1/77 * 1/76 = 1/456456

Not coincidentally, 456456 is the number of possible 3 card spreads from a deck of 78 cards.

I've attached a zip file which should contain an Excel file (since I can't upload Excel files directly) that has an extension of the numbers I did before. I created the table up through 80 cards, as that's the most I've seen in a deck. If you have a deck bigger than that, you'll have to add to the table. If your deck is less than that, you can change the cell that is labelled "Number of cards in the deck", and the rest of the table will automatically update.

A note on "Excel speak": 1.84933E+11 is how they write really big numbers. That would be equivalent to 1.84933x10^11 in the notation I had before. If you want to see it written out long-hand, you can format the cells to "Number" instead of "General", and Excel will expand them out.

Yes, yes I'm a geek. And proud of it!