Visualizing Card Shuffling and Permutations in 3D

Visualizing Card Shuffling and Permutations in 3D

Authors: 
Roger Antonsen

I have previously worked on visualizations of card shuffling and permutations, and I wanted to extend this to 3D. This is one attempt to do so. This 3D printed object illustrates two perfect out-shuffles with thirty-six cards and six piles. Each curve, from top to bottom, represents a single card, and after two perfect out-shuffles, the cards are restored to the original order. This was made with Processing and Rhino, and then produced by Shapeways.

3D printing
Group theory