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Main Authors: Ottolini, Andrea, Chen, Ray
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17345
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author Ottolini, Andrea
Chen, Ray
author_facet Ottolini, Andrea
Chen, Ray
contents We analyze the mixing time of a popular shuffling machine known as the shelf shuffler. It is a modified version of a $2m$-handed riffle shuffle ($m=10$ in casinos) in which a deck of $n$ cards is split multinomially into $2m$ piles, the even-numbered piles are reversed, and then cards are dropped from piles proportionally to their sizes. We prove that $\frac{5}{4} \log_{2m} n$ shuffles are necessary and sufficient to mix in total variation, and a cutoff occurs with constant window size. We also determine the cutoff profile in terms of the total variation distance between two shifted normal random variables.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_17345
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cutoff in total variation for the shelf shuffle
Ottolini, Andrea
Chen, Ray
Probability
60J10
We analyze the mixing time of a popular shuffling machine known as the shelf shuffler. It is a modified version of a $2m$-handed riffle shuffle ($m=10$ in casinos) in which a deck of $n$ cards is split multinomially into $2m$ piles, the even-numbered piles are reversed, and then cards are dropped from piles proportionally to their sizes. We prove that $\frac{5}{4} \log_{2m} n$ shuffles are necessary and sufficient to mix in total variation, and a cutoff occurs with constant window size. We also determine the cutoff profile in terms of the total variation distance between two shifted normal random variables.
title Cutoff in total variation for the shelf shuffle
topic Probability
60J10
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17345