Persi Diaconis’s unlikely scholarly career in mathematics began with a disappearing act. He was 14 years old and obsessed with magic, spending much of his free time in or around Tannen’s Magic Store, ...

Magic tricks are inextricably linked to statistics and mathematical models, according to Persi Diaconis in his public lecture, “Mathematics and Magic,” delivered Wednesday night in Cubberley ...

For decades, flipping a coin has symbolized perfect randomness—a fair, 50/50 chance between heads and tails. But research suggests that this age-old belief might not be as foolproof as we thought. A ...

You don’t need to be a mathematician or a Vegas card shark to know that, when all things are equal, the probability of flipping a coin and guessing which side lands up correctly is 50-50. But what ...

Here’s the secret behind one of the mathematical tricks that Persi Diaconis, of Stanford University, developed for his magic act: In order to guess the cards held by five audience members who have all ...

Look at anything long enough, you’ll start wondering about its particulars, and odds are that more than a few of our readers have stared at a die and genuinely pondered it. Is one face of a 30-sided ...