Persi Diaconis is a recipient of the 1982 MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship and also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a former professional magician who is particularly known for tackling mathematical problems involving randomness and randomization, such as coin flipping and shuffling playing cards. He has been a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University, visited AT&T Bell Laboratories, and is currently the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Mathematics at Harvard.

The mathematics of mixing things up

I will argue that it takes seven ordinary shuffles to mix up 52 cards. The argument gives Hodge decompositions for Hochshild decompositions. (Joint work with David Bayer).