Solitaire with all 52 cards has 52 factorial (~8×10^67) possible games, making the probability of winning impossible to solve analytically; Ulam's insight was to play hundreds of games and count winnable ones to get a statistical approximation.

factualpending

Speaker

Casper

Evidence Quote

“what if I just play hundreds of games and count how many could be won? That would give him some sort of statistical approximation”

Source

The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) Anything— Veritasium
Created: 6/18/2026, 1:59:31 PM

My Notes

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