So I was doing card tricks for at my department lunch and one of the professors asked me if I know any math tricks.


Is this even a good idea? I've got the feeling it'll take them two seconds to figure out :/

I teach at a university, in a non-math-and-science kind of discipline, and I have often wondered the same thing. I have never dared to show a math prof any math-based magic. Maybe I'm too timid?

Hi gang,

After thirty years, I recently bailed out of the Ed-Biz due to a pinhead Dean. I formerly was an assistant professor of mathematics. Speaking for myself, I would have loved to have someone show me mathematical effects over lunch. Having said that, though, the appeal probably would have been different for me than for someone who was looking to be stunned with something like Twisting the Aces, or Triumph or Dr. Daley's Last Trick.

However, despite the sometimes bad rap it gets, there really are some mystifying mathematically based effects out there. Some diabolical effects do a great job of disguising the clever and elegant mathematics going on in the background.

So I say, go for it. Every performance lends experience, and you're bound to get a mathematician in any crowd sooner or later. And if the effect is entertaining (surely an important criterion), then so what if you can't fool a mathematics professor. If he or she comes away entertained, then it was a job well done. I suppose the real test would be if they ask you to do another one the following day.

On a somewhat related theme, my magic instructor was the brilliant and popular Bruno of Holland, back in the late 1960s. He always told me that he LOVED having engineers in the audience--they were the easiest to fool.

Thomas Henry

Yes. I've performed Tricks that utilize the Gilbreath Principle and Hummer's Parity Principle and have fooled mathematicians. Don't forget that that there is hidden information in each case. In the tricks that used the Gilbreath Principle, the stack was hidden and for the Parity Principle, I incorporated some very basic sleight of hand.

So I agree with Thomas, go for it.

Best,
Brian

So as a mathematician myself I would say that you can definitely fool mathematicians with tricks requiring mathematics... Having said that, if the mathematics is 'evident' in the effect (i.e. a procedural counting activity such as down and under dealing) then a mathematician might be more likely to question that activity, and work out what is going on. But having said that, any discerning audience member might question such a process anyway, even if they cannot derive the exact outcome.

For the most part, the strongest mathematical techniques in magic are still 'hidden', for instance faro shuffles, Gilbreath principle, undo influence are all disguised in normal actions that a magician would perform, and to an untrained eye should not arouse any suspicion (so long as you're not fumbling with your faros!), so from that point of a view a mathematician is no more likely to spot the workings than anyone else. Mathematicians are not insusceptible to misdirection!

Perhaps on a different note, however: I often discuss with mathematicians how quite interesting mathematics has a role in card magic, for instance the beautiful results achievable with a faro shuffle are direct consequences of the relationship between shuffling and group theory, in particular permutation groups. Many similar examples of `deep' mathematics are given in Diaconis' book Magical Mathematics.

Finally: mathematics is not about arithmetic. In most cases being a mathematician does not heavily rely on you being good at arithmetic. Many of the not so subtle mathematical magic techniques rely on arithmetic, and with this regard
a mathematician is only as likely to work out whats going on as anybody else who uses numbers regularly.

Owen

If a really good presentation of the Magic Square would not fool a mathematician (which I feel it would) then it would at least entertain them...

Hi,

I agree with most of what has been said before. As a mathematician, I sometimes perform tricks for colleagues. As far as my experience goes, if the mathematical procedure is correctly hidden, they usually do not even think about looking for a "mathematical" explanation... However, there are a few mathematically driven effects which, I feel, always give away the method. For instance, I have yet to find a trick using the Kruskal count where the mathematical aspect is not obvious (I would love to find one since the principle itself rely on beautiful deep mathematics). I have also found that some tricks based on topological properties may be problematic. I recently performed card warp for a colleague. he enjoyed it so much he started thinking about it... and figured it out after 10 minutes. Well, I guess I will refrain from performing Lorayne's linking ring for him !

Just for the record if someone reading this wants a lot of math based tricks, almost any of the Martin Gardner books will have something along these lines and "Mathematics, Magic and Mystery" is totally devoted to magic. William Simon also has a good book called, I think, "Mathematical Magic". If the results are entertaining then it doesn't matter if a mathematician figures it out 10 minutes later.

Gardner, in my opinion, often does a great job making the math hidden. I like one where a rope is snaked on the floor...

Also see http://www.harryloraynemagic.com/math-wizardry.html

More educated the person, the more baffled he or she will be with magic /mathematical magic. One possible explanation for this is that conventional education has to do more with logical thinking and less with imagination.

When I was in graduate school for mathematics I had the opportunity to perform lots of magic for fellow students and professors. As mentioned by others, when the math is hidden in the effect, there is no problem fooling math experts. Some of the math effects I used back then are scattered through the books I have written including the latest Magica Analytica. A little sleight of hand goes a long way. A false shuffle really throws them off. They will never suspect a stack after a good false shuffle.

Larry