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Hello from Israel!

Last time I checked, I was a PhD student in Computer Science; and with the amazing breakthrough I recently had - finding out that PhD stands for "Patiently hoping for a Degree" - these days I tend to spend more time on magic (that is, almost exclusively on mentalism).

I used to do quite a good deal of magic tricks in the midst of the last decade of the past millennium (when I was about 15 years old), but quit the field at about that time. But watching Derren Brown's series last year suddenly brought back all that curiosity and enthusiasm, and here I find myself deep in the conundrums of mentalism.

Having done the basic field training of 13 Steps to Mentalism, Banachek's books and video series, Derren Brown's three books, and about two dozen other books and videos ranging from Luke Jermay's pure suggestions and Ian Rowland's cold reading book, to books on psychology and hypnotism, I have reached a level where I do succeed in fooling just about everyone in our university's Physics Department (actually I've found out that fooling physicists is quite easy - they are too busy doing the accurate measurements to notice the blatant trick, ehem, err, I mean "positive energies"...).

I think I've done enough rambling about myself already. If for any weird reason you would like to learn more about me, take a look at my website: http://www.tabibi.org

Best,

Omid.

Welcome to TM! I'm sure Craig would approve .

Shalom and welcome to the magic list. Hope you will finish you PhD, and make it in magic! Did you read "Magic, trics, card shuffeling and dynamic Computer Memories" by S. B. Morris? The book is based on the only PhD dissertation of card shuffeling. Did you hear about Persi Diaconis who toured with Dai Vernon when he was 15 yr old? Persi is today a Mathematician (statistician) and expert in the mathematics of card shuffeling.

Persi Diaconis recently gave a number of mathematical lectures on card shuffeling where he gave the following "mind-reading" card trick as an example:

Imagine I send you by mail a deck of 52 cards. What you need to do is to rifle-shuffle the deck three times, then to pick up the top card and
put it anywhere in the middle, after which you can make several cuts -
as many as you like. If you now return the deck to me, I'll be able to tell
you what the card was that you moved from the top into the middle.

Maybe we should make a special link where we discuss some of Morris and Persi's findings. The main findings need NOT to be keept secret since they are not really magic secrets, but concernes questions like ("if the deck contains x cards, how many out (in)-perfect faro shuffles is needed before the deck retur to its orginal state. Or assume the deck is in it some fixed intial ordering. By combining perfect in and out shuffles how many faros is needed to reverse the order of all the cards if the deck contains x cards. Mathematicians might even ask the question assumptotically when x tends to infinity. Not of great practical value to do in and fercect shuffled with a deck of cards contain for example several billion cards, however from a pure mathematical perspecitive there is no reason why the deck should have 52 cards and not for example 65768465237457832145123949035013 cards. Persi results are more concerned with genuine shuffles and might have some practical value in magic.

TAs you might know there are however some very beutiful and highly secret mathematical principles that can be absolutely killing when applied in mentalism (recall for example Mockingbird and Zenvelopes) on the first DVI/video by Max Maven. There are however other less know principles (based on elegant maths) that can be diabolic in mentalism.

Anyway, enjoy your stay...

Soren Riis wrote:Shalom and welcome to the magic list. Hope you will finish you PhD, and make it in magic! Did you read "Magic, trics, card shuffeling and dynamic Computer Memories" by S. B. Morris? The book is based on the only PhD dissertation of card shuffeling. Did you hear about Persi Diaconis who toured with Dai Vernon when he was 15 yr old? Persi is today a Mathematician (statistician) and expert in the mathematics of card shuffeling.

You just added more items to my constantly growing "to read" list of books

Imagine I send you by mail a deck of 52 cards. What you need to do is to rifle-shuffle the deck three times, then to pick up the top card and
put it anywhere in the middle, after which you can make several cuts -
as many as you like. If you now return the deck to me, I'll be able to tell
you what the card was that you moved from the top into the middle.

Yes, easy to figure out. I wish life was that easy, and people could do perfect riffle-shuffles!

The mathematics behind some of these effects is quite interesting. Currently I'm reading the book Statistics Hacks (already reviewed in this forum) which also contains interesting statistical analysis applicable to our field.

TAs you might know there are however some very beutiful and highly secret mathematical principles that can be absolutely killing when applied in mentalism (recall for example Mockingbird and Zenvelopes) on the first DVI/video by Max Maven. There are however other less know principles (based on elegant maths) that can be diabolic in mentalism.

You will be surprised if I say this, but just today I managed to fool several mathematics graduate students by Banachek's version of the very simple three digit number reversal effect

Welcome, Hope you enjoy your stay

Welcome to talk magic and i hope you enjoy this site. Best wishes to you.

Welcome

Ma nishma Omid. Baruch haba TM.
I share your admiration towards Derren Brown, I think a lot of what he is doing is absolutely amazing. Having written that, meeting Derren or Dez (chuckle) in person and talking with him at the International Magic Convention in London last month was a thrill.
I hope you enjoy your stay here.
Best greetings from Iceland!

Ma nishma Omid. Baruch haba TM.

Toda raba

Best greetings from Iceland!

Up to the last sentence I was sure you are from Israel! Where is the Hebrew from?

ODT wrote: Where is the Hebrew from?

Oups... no no, I'm only from Iceland. But... I have Israeli friends that live in Haifa and Tel Aviv and some years ago I learned a few words, just to appear curteous.

So... in English: Welcome to Talk Magic and please enjoy your stay here