The Magical Way to Learn Mathematics

27 Cards: What's Your Favorite Number?

Grade level: 6-12
Difficulty level: Hard

  • The magician asks a volunteer for his/her favorite number from 0 to 26.
  • The volunteer picks a card from a stack of 27 cards, shows it to the audience, and puts it in a random spot in the stack.
  • The magician puts all the cards one at a time face up into three piles, asks the audience to point to the pile that contains the volunteer's card, and restacks them into a single stack.
  • The previous step is repeated two more times.
  • The magician hands the stack to the volunteer and asks him/her to discard his/her favorite number of cards. The next card is the volunteer's card.

      Detailed description