Persi Diaconis
E39629
Persi Diaconis is an American mathematician and former professional magician renowned for his work on probability, randomness, and the mathematics of card shuffling and magic tricks.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Persi Diaconis canonical | 6 |
| Persi Warren Diaconis | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T308287 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Persi Diaconis Context triple: [Martin Gardner, influenced, Persi Diaconis]
-
A.
Richard K. Guy
Richard K. Guy was a British-Canadian mathematician renowned for his work in number theory, combinatorics, and recreational mathematics, and for coauthoring influential books that popularized mathematical games and puzzles.
-
B.
Elwyn R. Berlekamp
Elwyn R. Berlekamp was an American mathematician and engineer known for his influential work in coding theory, combinatorial game theory, and algorithms.
-
C.
Mark Kac
Mark Kac was a Polish-American mathematician renowned for his work in probability theory and mathematical physics, particularly for linking stochastic processes with partial differential equations.
-
D.
John H. Conway
John H. Conway was a British mathematician renowned for his work in group theory, number theory, and recreational mathematics, including the invention of the cellular automaton "Game of Life."
-
E.
Manuel Blum
Manuel Blum is a Venezuelan-American computer scientist and Turing Award laureate renowned for his foundational contributions to computational complexity theory and cryptography.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Persi Diaconis Target entity description: Persi Diaconis is an American mathematician and former professional magician renowned for his work on probability, randomness, and the mathematics of card shuffling and magic tricks.
-
A.
Richard K. Guy
Richard K. Guy was a British-Canadian mathematician renowned for his work in number theory, combinatorics, and recreational mathematics, and for coauthoring influential books that popularized mathematical games and puzzles.
-
B.
Elwyn R. Berlekamp
Elwyn R. Berlekamp was an American mathematician and engineer known for his influential work in coding theory, combinatorial game theory, and algorithms.
-
C.
Mark Kac
Mark Kac was a Polish-American mathematician renowned for his work in probability theory and mathematical physics, particularly for linking stochastic processes with partial differential equations.
-
D.
John H. Conway
John H. Conway was a British mathematician renowned for his work in group theory, number theory, and recreational mathematics, including the invention of the cellular automaton "Game of Life."
-
E.
Manuel Blum
Manuel Blum is a Venezuelan-American computer scientist and Turing Award laureate renowned for his foundational contributions to computational complexity theory and cryptography.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
human
ⓘ
magician ⓘ mathematician ⓘ probabilist ⓘ |
| almaMater | Harvard University ⓘ |
| awardReceived |
Leroy P. Steele Prize for Mathematical Exposition
ⓘ
linked to:
Leroy P. Steele Prize
MacArthur Fellowship ⓘ Rollo Davidson Prize ⓘ |
| countryOfCitizenship | United States of America ⓘ |
| dateOfBirth | 1945-01-31 ⓘ |
| doctoralAdvisor | Fred Mosteller ⓘ |
| educatedBy |
Fred Mosteller
ⓘ
linked to:
Solomon Kullback
|
| employer | Stanford University ⓘ |
| fieldOfWork |
combinatorics
ⓘ
mathematics of card shuffling ⓘ mathematics of magic tricks ⓘ mathematics of randomness ⓘ probability theory ⓘ statistics ⓘ |
| hasNotableStudent |
Jason Fulman
ⓘ
Susan Holmes ⓘ |
| hasResearchInterest |
applications of probability to card games
ⓘ
coin tossing ⓘ mathematics of illusions ⓘ random number generation ⓘ randomness in everyday life ⓘ |
| knownFor |
analysis of card shuffling
ⓘ
applications of group theory to probability ⓘ mathematical analysis of magic tricks ⓘ research on Markov chains ⓘ work on randomness ⓘ |
| languageSpoken | English ⓘ |
| memberOf |
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
ⓘ
National Academy of Sciences ⓘ |
| name |
Persi Warren Diaconis
ⓘ
linked to:
Persi Diaconis
|
| notableConcept | seven shuffles to randomize a deck of cards ⓘ |
| notableWork |
mathematical analysis of riffle shuffles
ⓘ
research on mixing times of Markov chains ⓘ theory of random walks on groups ⓘ work on Bayesian statistics ⓘ |
| occupation |
magician
ⓘ
mathematician ⓘ statistician ⓘ university professor ⓘ |
| performedAs | professional magician ⓘ |
| placeOfBirth | New York City ⓘ |
| spouse | Susan Holmes ⓘ |
| workInstitution |
Stanford University Department of Mathematics
ⓘ
Stanford University Department of Statistics ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Persi Diaconis Description of subject: Persi Diaconis is an American mathematician and former professional magician renowned for his work on probability, randomness, and the mathematics of card shuffling and magic tricks.
Referenced by (7)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
linked to: Persi Diaconis