Date of Submission

Spring 2023

Academic Program

Mathematics

Project Advisor 1

Lauren Lynn Rose

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The card game “SPOT IT!” consists of 55 cards, with 8 symbols appearing on each card. Every pair of cards has exactly one symbol in common, and the goal of the game is to be the first person to find this symbol. An alternate way to play the game is to find sets of 3 cards that have the same symbol in common. We will use combinatorics, probability, and finite projective geometry to analyze the structure of the game. The game “SPOT IT!” can be viewed as the projective plane of order 7. However, we can construct a similar game for any prime number n. The goal of this project is to determine the probability that in a given k-card layout there will be at least one triple. Our results will determine the ideal number of cards to lay out when finding triples in “SPOT IT!” games of order n.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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