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) AnythingVeritasium
Created: 6/18/2026, 1:59:31 PM

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