Card Stacking Method

Abstract

The topic of this report is the investigation of the effectiveness of the two most popular card-stacking methods. This topic was decided upon as the research question because card-stacking, while being a famous pastime, requires a lot of skill and precision, which is why some get discouraged to even try it. With this report it is proven that one of the simple method yields better results, regardless of a person’s skills. In order to test the hypothesis, five people of different experience in this field were asked to conduct 10 trials of building a house of cards (five trials of each method). The average number of cards per trial was then calculated for each subject and method. The results clearly showed that one of the methods yielded

The cards should be placed in even and reasonable intervals to minimize the probability of a domino effect, where one mistake may lead to the disruption of a large fragment of the construction or even the whole structure. The conducted preliminary research established the two most commonly used card-stacking methods, which do not require any previous knowledge concerning the technical aspects of the stability of structures. These methods are: the triangular (Figure 1) and the side-stack (Figure 2). Since we are approaching the task of building a house of cards in the most optimal manner from the perspective of a person with average interest in this matter, only the two methods were taken into

Two most popular methods were chosen and experimented on. Although one can clearly observe the higher results obtained by using the second method, the increase in efficiency is not proportional for every case. One of the reasons for this inconsistency is that the trials themselves were not timed, meaning that some subjects took more time than others, thus concentrating more on the task and achieving better results than their counterparts. Another factor that should further be researched is the correlation between the level of proficiency and the importance of the choice of the method. In this trial we observed that the person perceived to have the least predisposition towards activities requiring precision and attentiveness (trembling hands, short concentration spans) gained the most from changing methods. However, for other subjects, a clear correlation was not obtained. Once practice and experience become factors, the method becomes less relevant. Therefore, the difference in achieved results