Hey Derek Selinger here in beautiful
Calgary Alberta, that's where I live,
wearing my 50th State of Mind hat from
Maui, because I just, I'm in a Maui state
of mind. Anyway the election's coming up
like next week in my province and a
couple friends of mine, Marc and Christina
have a public affairs company and what
they do, well they do a lot of things, but
one of the things they do is they do
polling to figure out what's going on
with the different political parties and
that type of thing, and I thought I'd
give them a study break and do a bit of
a magic trick for them, a bit of a card
trick and to show them why you don't
entrust me to count the votes, because
I'm a magician and magicians count in
funny ways as you're gonna see in just a
moment. So let's see some magic, here we go!
Me and the Magic Man went for a long drive.
Alright Derek Selinger here with my friends Marc and Christina.
You also operate a company that is all
about interpreting numbers, that sound
right? And would I be correct
in saying that in interpreting numbers
you're actually interpreting people?
Yes, absolutely.
Counting the numbers correctly is really important.
Absolutely.
Well today we're going to talk about or
take a look at why you don't have
magicians count the numbers. Now in
casinos there's a right and a wrong way
to count a card, okay. In order to count
a card you have to show the face and the
back, it's just that way they're,
they're consistent. That would be one,
that would be card number two, that would
be card number three, four, five...
Christina I'd like you to continue for
us. Face in the back, underneath and
count out loud. Yeah that's right...
six, seven, eight,
good, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.
Good, and just tuck them underneath
your leg if you don't mind.
Alright, all gone.
I'm gonna grab three cards of my own. 
The first card, watch...just take it
drop it into the table
The second card, same thing...
Dropping that, just leaving the Jack of Clubs,
the Jack of Clubs actually
disappears into the table.
Alright, take the cards out, count them
one at a time onto the table.
One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen and sixteen.
So this would not, and they're
still warm too, especially the Jack of Clubs
Pick up the cards for me.
This would not be helpful...
No, no...no! Not at all.
Let's try one more time. Hold it up to
your heart, up to your heart
We're going to just find Christina some cards,
here we go.
That's one.
There we go that's two.
Three, good! Count 'em again.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen, eighteen and nineteen!
What the heck!
And that is why I'm not hired by statistics people
to count the numbers in polls and whatnot
and that's a new applied math and one
plus one equals three, or nineteen.
Thanks for playing!
