Gems from the world of probability and randomized algorithms

Card shuffle
Difficulty level: moderate

We all have played cards at least once in our life time. Each game involving playing cards
involves shuffling the cards in the beginning. There are many card shuffling strategies. The
aim of shuffling is to reorder the cards so that any ordering due to the previous game gets
destroyed. Ideally, one would like to achieve a random permutation after shuffling cards.
Here is a very simple card shuffling strategy. Every time we pick the card from the top
and place it at any of the 52 locations selected randomly uniformly. We need to repeat this
step. After how many steps on average, would you stop and claim that ou have achieved a
uniformly random permutation ?
If you enjoyed this problem, then you should ponder over the shuffling strategy shown in
Figure 1. Can you analyse it as well ?

Figure 1: A popular card shuffling strategy: cut the pack into two equal parts and then
merge randomly unidormly.

Can analysis of some card shuffling algorithms get someone a prize in mathematics ? The
answer is yes. Search for Card shuffling algorithms or Persi Diaconis to have the real
fun/inspiration.