Age, Biography and Wiki

Persi Diaconis was born on 31 January, 1945 in New York City, US, is an American mathematician and statistician. Discover Persi Diaconis's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Learn How rich is he in this year and how he spends money? Also learn how he earned most of networth at the age of 79 years old?

Popular As N/A
Occupation N/A
Age 79 years old
Zodiac Sign Aquarius
Born 31 January 1945
Birthday 31 January
Birthplace New York City, US
Nationality United States

We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 31 January. He is a member of famous mathematician with the age 79 years old group.

Persi Diaconis Height, Weight & Measurements

At 79 years old, Persi Diaconis height not available right now. We will update Persi Diaconis's Height, weight, Body Measurements, Eye Color, Hair Color, Shoe & Dress size soon as possible.

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Who Is Persi Diaconis's Wife?

His wife is Susan Holmes

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Wife Susan Holmes
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Persi Diaconis Net Worth

His net worth has been growing significantly in 2023-2024. So, how much is Persi Diaconis worth at the age of 79 years old? Persi Diaconis’s income source is mostly from being a successful mathematician. He is from United States. We have estimated Persi Diaconis's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets.

Net Worth in 2024 $1 Million - $5 Million
Salary in 2024 Under Review
Net Worth in 2023 Pending
Salary in 2023 Under Review
House Not Available
Cars Not Available
Source of Income mathematician

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Timeline

1945

Persi Warren Diaconis (born January 31, 1945) is an American mathematician of Greek descent and former professional magician.

He is the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at Stanford University.

He is particularly known for tackling mathematical problems involving randomness and randomization, such as coin flipping and shuffling playing cards.

Diaconis left home at 14 to travel with sleight-of-hand legend Dai Vernon, and was awarded a high school diploma based on grades given to him by his teachers after dropping out of George Washington High School.

He returned to school at age 24 to learn math, motivated to read William Feller's famous two-volume treatise on probability theory, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications.

1971

He attended the City College of New York for his undergraduate work, graduating in 1971, and then obtained a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics from Harvard University in 1974, learned to read Feller, and became a mathematical probabilist.

According to Martin Gardner, at school, Diaconis supported himself by playing poker on ships between New York and South America.

Gardner recalls that Diaconis had "fantastic second deal and bottom deal".

Diaconis is married to Stanford statistics professor Susan Holmes.

1982

Diaconis received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1982.

1990

In 1990, he published (with Dave Bayer) a paper entitled "Trailing the Dovetail Shuffle to Its Lair" (a term coined by magician Charles Jordan in the early 1900s) which established rigorous results on how many times a deck of playing cards must be riffle shuffled before it can be considered random according to the mathematical measure total variation distance.

Diaconis is often cited for the simplified proposition that it takes seven shuffles to randomize a deck.

More precisely, Diaconis showed that, in the Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model of how likely it is that a riffle results in a particular riffle shuffle permutation, it takes 5 riffles before the total variation distance of a 52-card deck begins to drop significantly from the maximum value of 1.0, and 7 riffles before it drops below 0.5 very quickly (a threshold phenomenon), after which it is reduced by a factor of 2 every shuffle.

When entropy is viewed as the probabilistic distance, riffle shuffling seems to take less time to mix, and the threshold phenomenon goes away (because the entropy function is subadditive).

1992

Diaconis has coauthored several more recent papers expanding on his 1992 results and relating the problem of shuffling cards to other problems in mathematics.

Among other things, they showed that the separation distance of an ordered blackjack deck (that is, aces on top, followed by 2's, followed by 3's, etc.) drops below .5 after 7 shuffles.

Separation distance is an upper bound for variation distance.

Diaconis has been hired by casino executives to search for subtle flaws in their automatic card shuffling machines.

Diaconis soon found some and the horrified executives responded, "We are not pleased with your conclusions but we believe them and that's what we hired you for."

2011

He served on the Mathematical Sciences jury of the Infosys Prize in 2011 and 2012.

The books written or coauthored by Diaconis include:

His other publications include: