Consider the following method of shuffling a deck of
playing cards numbered
through
. Take the top card from the deck and then replace it so that it is equally likely to be put under exactly
cards for
. Continue doing this operation until the card that was initially on the bottom of the deck is now on top. Then do it one more time and stop.
a) Suppose that at some point there are
cards beneath the one that was originally on the bottom of the deck. Given this set of
cards explain why each of the possible
orderings is equally likely to be the ordering of the last
cards
b) Conclude that the final ordering is equally likely to be any of n! orderings
c) Find the expectation ... .