Racko!

Level 2

There is a game called Racko! where you are dealt numbered cards and have to get them in ascending order.

Take a deck of cards labeled 1-60. Shuffle well and flip over the first 10 cards in a row from left to right.

We are interested in number of cards in a row from the left that are in ascending order.

For example if the cards were ( 3 , 15 , 22 , 59 , 40 , 7 , 19 , 30 , 33 , 34 ) (3, 15, 22, 59, 40, 7, 19, 30, 33, 34) then there are 4 4 cards in ascending order. The streak ends with the 59 59 because the next card, 40 40 , is lower.

Find the probability that there are 6 6 cards in ascending order. This probability can be written as 1 n \frac{1}{n} . Give the value of n n .


The answer is 840.

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1 solution

Jeremy Galvagni
Apr 8, 2018

Obviously the 60 cards do not matter, curiously the fact that 10 cards are dealt doesn't (for this problem but I'll call it C C below) either.

Let P ( x ) P(x) be the probability of x x cards in ascending order.

P ( 0 ) = 0 P(0)=0 because some card has to be first

P ( 1 ) = 1 2 P(1)=\frac{1}{2} because there's an equal chance that the first card is smaller than the second.

From here we have the general formula

P ( x ) = { x ( x + 1 ) ! , if x < C 1 ( x ) ! , if x = C \large P(x)= \begin{cases} \frac{x}{(x+1)!}, & \mbox{if } x<C \\ \frac{1}{(x)!}, & \mbox{if } x=C \end{cases}

Proof: Suppose you were given cards and asked for the probability that the first ( x + 1 ) (x+1) were in order. That would be 1 ( x + 1 ) ! \frac{1}{(x+1)!} . Now, for each of those, take any one of the first x x cards and move it to the last position. Those are all of the possibilities for first x x in order and next one lower given some set of x + 1 x+1 cards to start. Thus, P ( x ) = x ( x + 1 ) ! P(x)=\frac{x}{(x+1)!} unless there is no last card because x = C x=C , but then P ( x ) = 1 ( x ) ! P(x)=\frac{1}{(x)!} is obvious.

In the problem above x = 6 x=6 so P ( 6 ) = 6 ( 7 ) ! = 1 840 P(6)=\frac{6}{(7)!} = \frac{1}{840} so n = 840 \boxed{n=840}

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