What is a permutation?

Have you ever played a game of cards like Go Fish or Snap? What if I told you that every time you shuffle a brand new deck of 52 cards, you are holding a tiny piece of history that has almost certainly never existed before in the universe?! It sounds like magic, but it is actually the incredible maths of permutations! Join Mira and Finn as they explore how ordinary playing cards can be ordered in more ways than there are atoms in our entire Milky Way galaxy. That is a massive number with 68 digits! We will also travel back to 1992 to meet a real-life magician-turned-mathematician named Persi Diaconis. He and his partner Dave Bayer proved that it takes exactly seven "riffle shuffles" to completely and perfectly mix up a pack of cards. You will learn how a giant, invisible factory of numbers makes possible combinations explode faster than you can count. Get ready to have your mind totally blown—the next time you shuffle a deck of cards, you will be holding a brand new, totally unique pattern right in the palms of your hands!