Persi Warren Diaconis was famous for being a mathematician. Diaconis did this in a special way though, he added his magic skills. He gave lessons, invented tricks, is an author, speaker, and he collected books on magic. The unusual work is part math textbook, part magic primer, and part history book, tracing how magic and math have long traveled under the same concept. Diaconis thought people wouldn't take him seriously when he said he wanted to mix magic and math together to try to solve questions he had been wondering almost all of his life. Persi Diaconis was born on January 31, 1945 in New York City, New York. Diaconis was born into a family of professional musicians. When Persi was a kid, his favorite place to be was the magic store.
…show more content…
He paid his way through night school by continuing doing magic shows. Persi went back to school to answer questions like: How many different ways can you arrange the cards in a deck? What if you ignore the number and suit and only consider card color – then how many different ways can you arrange the deck? Diaconis realized he needed math to answer those. In the mid-1970s, when Diaconis first came to Stanford, where he has spent most of his scholarly career, he planned to keep his magic background a secret from his academic colleagues. He was awarded the B.S. Mathematics by City College in January 1971. Diaconis was working towards his degree in mathematics. After City College, he was admitted to Harvard College for graduate studies. Frederick Mosteller was interested in Persi Diaconis based on the recommendation from Martin Gardner. Gardner states that Mosteller was very interested in magic. Diaconis was willing to major in statistics and this is what helped him get accepted. Mosteller suggested that Diaconis might like to invest time in the distribution of prime divisors of an integer chosen at a random selection. Diaconis soon discussed this topic with Hironari Onishi, who had taught him mathematics at the City College he went to. After a year, he had reviewed his investigations with Mosteller and soon after, the results were published in the Journal of Number Theory. Harvard is the graduate
He paid his way through night school by continuing doing magic shows. Persi went back to school to answer questions like: How many different ways can you arrange the cards in a deck? What if you ignore the number and suit and only consider card color – then how many different ways can you arrange the deck? Diaconis realized he needed math to answer those. In the mid-1970s, when Diaconis first came to Stanford, where he has spent most of his scholarly career, he planned to keep his magic background a secret from his academic colleagues. He was awarded the B.S. Mathematics by City College in January 1971. Diaconis was working towards his degree in mathematics. After City College, he was admitted to Harvard College for graduate studies. Frederick Mosteller was interested in Persi Diaconis based on the recommendation from Martin Gardner. Gardner states that Mosteller was very interested in magic. Diaconis was willing to major in statistics and this is what helped him get accepted. Mosteller suggested that Diaconis might like to invest time in the distribution of prime divisors of an integer chosen at a random selection. Diaconis soon discussed this topic with Hironari Onishi, who had taught him mathematics at the City College he went to. After a year, he had reviewed his investigations with Mosteller and soon after, the results were published in the Journal of Number Theory. Harvard is the graduate