How large is 52!?
This Thanksgiving I was hanging out with my little cousin, who was dealing cards from a standard 52 card deck. I asked her the question: “How many times could you deal the whole deck and see a unique order of cards – different than every other time you dealt the deck in the past?” Or to put it another way, “How many unique deals (‘permutations’) of all 52 cards are there?” If you’ve done any number theory (or looked at…