Tarot Deck

In a Tarot deck of 78 cards, what are the odds of pulling the same card twice in a row?

Mathematically, it's 1:78 to pull a specific card. But what are the odds of pulling the SAME card twice in a row?

Public Comments

1. (1/78)^2 = 1 : 6084 = 0.0164 %
2. it depends if u put the card back in the deck or not
3. What Dr D said.
4. 1/78. Assuming you don't mean a specific card (like "the Death card") twice. If you do mean a specific up-front specified card twice, the answer would be (1/78)^2. But for just ANY card twice in a row, it's the same as one specific card. The first draw can be any card at all (probability: 78/78 = 1/1), then the second draw must match the original card (probability: 1/78). 1/1 * 1/78 = 1/78. Of course, this assumes you draw "with replacement" (putting back the card after you draw it). Otherwise the probability is 0.
5. 1:6084
6. 1:78^2
7. one in 78 . both times.
8. about 1 in 39
9. It's 1 in 78. It works that way because you didn't specify which card. If you draw a card, all that needs to happen for your condition to be met is for that same card to be drawn again. It would be 1 in 6084 if you had a specific card in mind that you wanted drawn twice in a row.
10. It's still 1/78 because no matter what card you pull first, your odds of pulling the same one again are still 1/78. Now if you are thinking of a card to pull twice BEFORE your first pull, then the odds are 1/6084
11. 2:156
12. I think its 1/78 times 1/78 =0.000164366 ... (the probability of getting that card the first time, then the probability of getting that card the second time, after replacing it.) I am not sure though...I took stats a long time ago. What do other people think? Actually never mind, looking at other peoples answers, its just 1/78 (what i said above only applies if u specified what card u were pulling)
13. 1:78. You can pull any card the first time.
14. You are correct that the pulling any particular card on the first draw is 1/78. If you replace the card and randomly draw again, the chance of getting a particular card on the second draw is also 1/78. To get the joint probability of picking the SAME card in two successive draws you multiply 1/78 x 1/78. The resulting probability is 0.000164. To put this in perspective, if you drew two cards in this way 100,000,000 times, you would draw the same card twice in a row about 164 times!
15. The probability of pulling any one card is 1 / 78. Replace the drawn cardback into the deck and shuffle. The probability of pulling the same card as from the first pull is 1 / 78. Since the pulls are independent events, we can multiply the probabilities of the seperate pulls to calculate the probability of pulling the same card twice with replacement. P(pulling same card twice with replacement) = (1/ 78)(1 / 78) = 1 / 6084