We all have our favoured methods of shuffling cards, but most of us don't think any more about it once we've started playing a game. But there's so much more to be discovered! In this podcast mathematician Cheryl Praeger and magician Will Houstoun reveal the maths and magic behind shuffling cards. And to celebrate our new collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute, Dan Aspel tells us all about the INI!

You can watch Cheryl Praeger talk about the mathematics of shuffling in her Kirk Lecture at the INI in 2020. http://www.newton.ac.uk/seminar/20200317160017001

You can be astounded by Will Houstoun's magic and find out more about his work as magician in residence at the Imperial College London and Royal College of Music Centre for Performance Science, at his website http://drhoustoun.co.uk/index.html. There you'll also find his amazing trick that we mentioned in the podcast https://drhoustoun.com/portfolio/the-next-great-magician/

And you can read all the details behind the maths and magic of shuffling in Will and Cheryl's Plus articles:
https://plus.maths.org/content/magic-shuffling
https://plus.maths.org/content/mathematics-shuffling

This article is part of our collaboration with the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (INI), an international research centre and our neighbour here on the University of Cambridge's maths campus. INI attracts leading mathematical scientists from all over the world, and is open to all. Visit https://www.newton.ac.uk/ to find out more.