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I encountered the following problem:

From a shuffled deck the cards are flipped one by one until a queen shows up. Then again a card is flipped. Is it more likely that this card is the Jack of Spades or the Queen of Hearts?

I managed to solve this by first finding the probability that the card will be the Jack of Spades under the extra condition that the rank of the Jack of Spades is $n$. If $J_s$ denotes the event that the Jack of Spades is the card and $N$ denotes the rank of the Jack of Spades then:$$P(J_s\mid N=n)=\binom{52-n}3\times\binom{51}4^{-1}$$This because under condition $N=n$ there are $\binom{51}4$ possibilities for the $4$ queens of which $\binom{52-n}3$ are favorable.

Applying the hockey stick identity and the law of total probability we then find: $$P(J_s)=\frac1{52}$$From this it can be deduced easily that also $P(Q_h)=\frac1{52}$ so apparantly the chances are equal. This amazed me because I could not find an explaining symmetry for that.

My question arises from the fact that I am simply not satisfied with this solution and is:

Could someone give me a "nicer" solution that avoids calculations and rests on something like a smart perspective of the case?

I just feel that a nicer and more direct solution can be found.

Thank you for taking notice of my question, which is purely an effort to enrich my intuitions on probability.


Edit

Thank you for comments already, but if you have a real answer then please do not hesitate to provide one. And preferably a complete one. Also: more perspectives will imply a larger enrichment of my intuition.

Thank you in advance.

RobPratt
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drhab
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  • "From a shuffled deck the cards are flipped one by one until a queen shows up". At this step, you can consider 4 options. If this queen is Club, Diamond, Hearts, Spade... for each option, try to continue. – Lourrran Mar 08 '23 at 10:34
  • Just to be clear, I suppose that by "rank" you mean position in the queue; and that there is a presumption that when the first Queen turns up, the Queen of Hearts and Jack of Spades are still to come ? – true blue anil Mar 08 '23 at 10:58
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    For every card $X$ different than the first queen, the probability of "$X$ follows the first queen" is the same. However, for the first queen itself, the probability it follows itself is zero. Of course the jack of spades can not be the first queen – but the queen of hearts can. – CiaPan Mar 08 '23 at 10:59
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    I don't think that the probabilities are the same because it could be the case that the first queen will be the queen of hearts. –  Mar 08 '23 at 11:08
  • @trueblueanil By "rank" I mean indeed the position in the queue. But it is not excluded that the Jack of Spades has a smaller rank than the first Queen. Also it is not excluded that the first Queen is the Queen of hearts. If not then it is for sure the Queen of hearts has a larger rank than the first Queen. – drhab Mar 08 '23 at 11:10
  • @Masacroso I had thoughts like that too but calculation as done in my answer proved me wrong. This also makes it an intriguing problem. Try it out on a smaller concept (e.g. 8 cards, only queens and jacks) to convince yourself. – drhab Mar 08 '23 at 11:15
  • Just for clarity, what is the answer to ".... Is it more likely that this card is the Jack of Spades or the Queen of Hearts" supposed to be if (i) the first Queen is the Queen of hearts, (ii) the Jack of Spades comes before the first Queen. – true blue anil Mar 11 '23 at 20:34
  • @trueblueanil let E denote the event that the first Queen is the Queen of Hearts. Then P(QoH|E)=0 and P(JoS|E)>0 so the chances are in favour of JoS. If F denotes the event that JoS comes before the first Queen then P(JoS|F)=0 and P(QoH|F)>0 so under that condition the chances are in favour of QoH. Here JoS stands for the event that the Jack of Spades is the first card after the first Queen and QoH for the event that the Queen of Hearts is the first card after the first Queen. – drhab Mar 12 '23 at 07:51
  • And to complete, if JoS comes before the first Queen which turns out to be the QoH ? – true blue anil Mar 12 '23 at 07:59
  • Then, I presume, neither JoS nor QoH "wins" ? – true blue anil Mar 12 '23 at 08:18
  • @trueblueanil Indeed. The question is not so much about winning in the first place. But if you want to see it that way (nothing wrong with that) then we deal with a game that allows a draw. – drhab Mar 12 '23 at 11:41
  • @trueblueanil The situation "JoS comes before the first Queen and the first Queen turns out to be QoH" is one of the situations that implies a draw. The first Queen is then not followed directly by JoS nor by QoH. – drhab Mar 12 '23 at 11:50

5 Answers5

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Take the card you are interested in, be it $Q\heartsuit$, $J\spadesuit$, or something else entirely, call it $X$. Now remove $X$ from the deck and sort the rest of the cards. There are, of course, $51!$ ways to sort the $X-$less deck, and then there is a unique spot in which to insert the $X$ so that it immediately follows the first queen.

In this way, we see that there are exactly $51!$ arrangements of the deck such that $X$ is immediately following the first Queen. As there are $52!$ ways to sort the deck without worrying about $X$, the probability that $X$ is in the desired slot is $$\frac {51!}{52!}=\frac 1{52}$$

lulu
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    Ah, yes. It has landed (and you are a genius)! Thank you very much, lulu. Especially for confirmation of my conjecture and enrichment of my intuition. – drhab Mar 08 '23 at 12:05
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    @drhab It does tend to resist intuition. The notion is something like "sure, the specified Queen might have already been drawn as the first Queen but then you probably drew a whole lot of non-queen cards en route to getting that first queen and these two effects cancel." Hard to make that precise though. Good problem. – lulu Mar 08 '23 at 13:22
  • What you commented describes my thinking about it. Two opposite effects canceling eachother exactly. Especially the exactness amazed me and convinced me that somehow my calculations had to be redundant. – drhab Mar 08 '23 at 13:40
  • @drhab: But somehow there is a sneaking doubt. If the Queen of Hearts is the first Queen, how can it follow itself ??? By withdrawing IT, and inserting it after the first Queen, aren't you implicitly implying the conditionality that the first Queen is not the Queen of Hearts ??? – true blue anil Mar 08 '23 at 14:49
  • @drhab: And if you don't impose the above conditionality, is it not game over if the Queen of Hearts is the first Heart ??? – true blue anil Mar 08 '23 at 14:57
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    @trueblueanil Of course it is. Just as it is "game over" if you draw $J\spadesuit$ in the run prior to getting the first Queen. – lulu Mar 08 '23 at 15:15
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    @trueblueanil Try it with three cards, $J, Q_1, Q_2$. Easy to see, by direct enumeration, that each of the three cards is equally likely to be chosen immediately after the first $Q$. – lulu Mar 08 '23 at 15:17
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    @trueblueanil Correct me if I am wrong, but I think your intuition is based on the following false argument: if you condition on the first $Q$ being $Q\heartsuit$ then it is impossible for the next card to also be $Q\heartsuit$ but there is a $\frac 1{51}$ chance that it is $J\spadesuit$. If you condition on the first $Q$ being something other than a heart, then both have a $\frac 1{51}$ chance of being next. But this is wrong because in the second path, we are sure that no queen was chosen in the initial run but it is perfectly possible that $J\spadesuit$ was, so there is no equality. – lulu Mar 08 '23 at 15:23
  • @trueblueanil For completeness: there are three possibilities: the first Queen is followed by the Jack of Spades, or by Queen of Hearts or by some other card. The two first mentioned events have - as shown in this answer - both probability $\frac1{52}$. This all unconditionally. – drhab Mar 08 '23 at 15:25
  • @lulu: Hmm, what you are saying is that the two "game over" situations sort of cancel each other ? – true blue anil Mar 08 '23 at 15:30
  • @trueblueanil Well, the implication of the result is that those two situations exactly cancel. It's clear, I think, that the two scenarios offset. But why they should exactly net to $0$, independent of the number of cards in the deck, independent of the number of Queens in the deck is, I think, hard to see. I tried to prove it directly, without success (which obviously doesn't mean that such a proof is impossible). – lulu Mar 08 '23 at 15:33
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Here’s another perspective, by far not as elegant as the one in lulu’s answer, but perhaps it throws some more light on what misleads our intuition on this nice problem.

A quantitative form of the argument for the wrong intuition that the jack should be more likely would be: The probability that $Q\heartsuit$ has already been drawn after the first queen is drawn is $\frac14$, whereas the probability that $J\spadesuit$ has already been drawn is $\frac15$ (since that card and the four queens are all equally likely to be drawn first). Thus it’s more likely that $J\spadesuit$ is still in the deck than that $Q\heartsuit$ is still in the deck.

The mistake here is that these are just the marginal probabilities, but these events correlate with how many cards are still in the deck, and while $J\spadesuit$ is more likely to still be in the deck, in that case the deck is more likely to still contain more cards, which makes it less likely that $J\spadesuit$ will be drawn next.

The probability that, after the first queen is drawn, $Q\heartsuit$ has been drawn and there are $k$ cards left is

$$ \mathsf{Pr}(Q\heartsuit\text{ drawn}\land K=k)=\frac14\frac{\binom k3}{\binom{52}4}\;, $$

since there are $\binom{52}4$ ways to choose where the $4$ queens are, and for the event to occur $Q\heartsuit$ has to be in a particular place and the remaining $3$ queens must be among the remaining $k$ cards.

The probability that, after the first queen is drawn, $J\spadesuit$ has been drawn and there are $k$ cards left is

$$ \mathsf{Pr}(J\spadesuit\text{ drawn}\land K=k)=\frac{51-k}{48}\frac{\binom k3}{\binom{52}4}\;, $$

since one queen must be in a particular place, the other three must be among the remaining $k$ cards and $J\spadesuit$ must be among the $51-k$ cards drawn before the first queen, and there are $48$ places left where it could be.

Summing these over $k$ yields $\frac14$ and $\frac15$, respectively, as it must. But to get the probability that $Q\heartsuit$ or $J\spadesuit$ is drawn next, we need to sum the probability that that card hasn’t been drawn times $\frac1k$:

\begin{eqnarray} \mathsf{Pr}(Q\heartsuit\text{ is next}) &=& \sum_{k=3}^{51}\mathsf{Pr}(Q\heartsuit\text{ not drawn}\land K=k)\cdot\frac1k \\ &=& \sum_{k=3}^{51}\left(1-\frac14\right)\frac{\binom k3}{\binom{52}4}\cdot\frac1k \\ &=& \frac1{52} \end{eqnarray}

and

\begin{eqnarray} \mathsf{Pr}(J\spadesuit\text{ is next}) &=& \sum_{k=3}^{51}\mathsf{Pr}(J\spadesuit\text{ not drawn}\land K=k)\cdot\frac1k \\ &=& \sum_{k=3}^{51}\left(1-\frac{51-k}{48}\right)\frac{\binom k3}{\binom{52}4}\cdot\frac1k \\ &=& \frac1{52}\;. \end{eqnarray}

Here’s a Wolfram|Alpha plot of $\mathsf{Pr}(Q\heartsuit\text{ not drawn}\land K=k)$ and $\mathsf{Pr}(J\spadesuit\text{ not drawn}\land K=k)$ over $k$. You can see that the area under the curve for $J\spadesuit$ is a bit larger, but more of that area is at high $k$, whereas the probability for $Q\heartsuit$ is higher than the one for $J\spadesuit$ for $k\lt39$. The expected value of $k$ given that $Q\heartsuit$ or $J\spadesuit$ is still in the deck is

\begin{eqnarray} \mathsf E[K\mid Q\heartsuit\text{ not drawn}] &=& \frac43\sum_{k=3}^{51}\mathsf{Pr}(Q\heartsuit\text{ not drawn}\land K=k)\cdot k \\ &=& \frac43\sum_{k=3}^{51}\left(1-\frac14\right)\frac{\binom k3}{\binom{52}4}\cdot k \\ &=& \frac{207}5 \\ &=& 41.4 \end{eqnarray}

and

\begin{eqnarray} \mathsf E[K\mid J\spadesuit\text{ not drawn}] &=& \frac54\sum_{k=3}^{51}\mathsf{Pr}(J\spadesuit\text{ not drawn}\land K=k)\cdot k \\ &=& \frac54\sum_{k=3}^{51}\left(1-\frac{51-k}{48}\right)\frac{\binom k3}{\binom{52}4}\cdot k \\ &=&\frac{259}6 \\ &=&43.1\overline6\;, \end{eqnarray}

respectively, not that much of a difference, but what matters is the probabilities for small values of $k$, where it’s most likely to actually draw the card next if it’s still there, and since the ratio of the two probabilities is $\frac{k-3}{36}$, the queen has a considerable advantage at small $k$. This, of course, goes back to what’s already been discussed in comments, that $J\spadesuit$ can be gone due to having been drawn as any of the cards before the first queen, whereas $Q\heartsuit$ can only be gone due to being the first queen, which always has the same probability of $\frac14$ no matter how many cards have already been drawn.

joriki
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  • Thank you, Joriki. This answer indeed pictures nicely what is actually going on and pinpoints where our intuitions can easily fool us. – drhab Mar 09 '23 at 09:33
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Edited: We know absolutely nothing about the arrangement. Therefore each card is as likely to be any card, including the card after the first queen.

Ed Jansen
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  • The picture I have in mind is: we place all cards in a row one by one and place JoS as last card. After placing the first card there are $2$ possibilities for placing the second (on left or on right of the first card). Then after placing the second there are $3$ possibilities for the third (left, middle, right). Et cetera. If we place the JoS as last then there are $52$ possible spots and exactly one is favorable in the sense that it is exactly on the right of the first queen. Same story if we place QoH as last card. Does that agree with what you are trying to say here? – drhab Mar 10 '23 at 14:00
  • @drhab My idea is a little different, but it boils down to the same I guess. My idea is that there are 52 slots for the cards, and each card is in one slot. The JoS could be in any one of the 52 slots with the same probability, but it is only in one. If that slot is the slot after the first ace, then that's the favorable case. The probability that the card is in that slot is 1/52. Same for the QoH. – Ed Jansen Mar 10 '23 at 17:06
  • @drhab correction: my above comment should say 'after the first queen' instead of 'after the first ace'. – Ed Jansen Mar 10 '23 at 20:22
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I interpreted the question as a race whether the Queen of hearts or the Jack of Spades is "more likely" to follow the first Queen (be nearer after the first Queen), and that is why my answer of taking it to be a race differs from lulu's intuitive leap, and @Joriki's painstaking work taking it to be imediately after the first Queen.

However, clarification has now been received that the intention was that the card should immediately follow the first queen.

So I am undeleting my answer, and amplifying it by showing the working both for race (my original interpretation) and immediately following.


I believe that there is an asymmetry in the situation. I am modelling it as a game with win and "no win".

  • [1]Consider the Queen of hearts ($Q$), the three other queens $\;\,$ ($q$) and the Jack of Spades ($J$).
  • [2]Each of these five cards is equally likely to be the first to show up.
  • [3]If a $q$ shows up first, ($Pr= \frac35$), the symmetry in wins found by Lulu holds.
  • [4]If the $Q$ shows up first, ($Pr= \frac15$), only the $J$ can "win".
  • [5]If the $J$ shows up first, ($Pr=\frac15$), there are two subdivisions. If a $q$ shows up first among the Queens,$(Pr= \frac34),\, Q$ can "win", but if $Q$ shows up first,($Pr= \frac14$), it is a "no win" situation.
  • Hence the Jack of Spades has an edge over the Queen of Hearts, and is more likely to be seen after the first Queen.

Added

Only the order of the five cards of consequence (Queen of hearts, other $3$ queens and Jack of Spades) matter. The other cards could be strewn anywhere in the deck.

I am giving below a listing of all $20$ sequences along with the results, labelling Jack of spades as $1$, Queen of Hearts as $2$ and Queens other than Queen of Hearts as $0$

$\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|c|c||c|}\hline\\ 1&2&3&4&5& Race & Imm.\\ \hline 0&0&0&1&2&J&-\\ \hline 0&0&0&2&1&Q&-\\ \hline 0&0&1&0&2&J&- \\ \hline 0&0&1&2&0&J&-\\ \hline 0&0&2&0&1&Q&-\\ \hline 0&0&2&1&0&Q&-\\ \hline 0&1&0&0&2&J&J\\ \hline 0&1&0&2&0&J&J\\ \hline 0&1&2&0&0&J&J\\ \hline 0&2&0&0&1&Q&Q\\ \hline 0&2&0&1&0&Q&Q\\ \hline 0&2&1&0&0&Q&Q\\ \hline 1&0&0&0&2&Q&-\\ \hline 1&0&0&2&0&Q&-\\ \hline 1&0&2&0&0&Q&Q\\ \hline 1&2&0&0&0&-&-\\ \hline 2&0&0&0&1&J&-\\ \hline 2&0&0&1&0&J&-\\ \hline 2&0&1&0&0&J&-\\ \hline 2&1&0&0&0&J&J\\ \hline\end{array}$

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    Do I understand correctly that you're disagreeing with both the question and all three other answers in saying that the probability of drawing the Jack of spades immediately after the first queen is higher after all than that of drawing the queen of hearts immediately after first queen? If so, I think you should say something about how all those other people got it so wrong with the diverse methods they applied. – joriki Mar 12 '23 at 13:16
  • @joriki: Right from the beginning, I had questions about the "fringe situations" in the question. On receiving recent clarifications, I have just put what I think might be incorrect in lulu's answer. Re your answer, I will have to try and understand. But if there is any fallacy in my approach, I'd be grateful if you'd point it out. – true blue anil Mar 12 '23 at 14:02
  • Basically, the fallacy seems to me that you don't take into account what I focus on my answer: That it's not just a question of whether the jack is more likely than the queen to still be there, but also of how likely it is that it will be drawn immediately as the next card; you don't account for the fact that the queen makes up for being less likely to still be there by being more likely to be drawn immediately if she is. – joriki Mar 12 '23 at 15:06
  • @Joriki: As I said, it will take me time to understand and absorb your complex answer, so what I am asking is: in the statements I have made leading to my conclusion, which one(s) are incorrect ? – true blue anil Mar 12 '23 at 16:59
  • @drhab: Happening upon this page, I notice that both lulu and Joriki have assumed that the card must immediately follow the first queen, although the question states "more likely" which I interpreted as being ahead in the queue after the first queen. If immediacy is implied, I need to change my case by case results. Regards. – true blue anil Nov 19 '24 at 14:48
  • The question is about the card that immediately follows the first queen. Apologies for not being clear enough. Looking at your interpretation you nicely proved that without yhis immediacy we have P(J):P(Q)=10:9. If immediacy is required then 8 of the 20 possibilities remain and each of them has probability (1/4)×(1/52) to occur. Further in that case both J and Q win in 4 cases so it agrees with the answers of Lulu and Joriki. What you provided is nice and you can also choose to leave it untouched and add some clarification. I will upvote. Regards. – drhab Nov 20 '24 at 09:35
  • Oh, then, of course, the probabulities are equal as lulu explained. I shall add some clarifications as suggested by you. – true blue anil Nov 20 '24 at 10:42
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I agree with the previous comments, that:

Q: The first Queen chosen

Q♡: The Queen of Hearts

J♠: Jack of Spades

$$$$

Pr(Q♡ after Q) = Pr(Q is not the last card) $\times$ Pr(Q is not the Q♡) $\times$ Pr(Q♡ is after Q)

Pr(Q♡ after Q) = $(1 - \frac{1}{52 \times 51 \times 50 \times 49})$ $\times$ $\frac{3}{4}$ $\times$ $\frac{1}{51}$

Pr(Q♡ after Q) = $\frac{6497399}{6497400} \times \frac{3}{204}$

Pr(Q♡ after Q) = $\frac{19492197}{1325469600}$

Pr(Q♡ after Q) $\approx$ 1.47058800896%

$$$$

Pr(J♠ after Q) = Pr(Q is not the last card) $\times$ Pr(J♠ is after Q)

Pr(J♠ after Q) = $(1 - \frac{1}{52 \times 51 \times 50 \times 49})$ $\times$ $\frac{1}{51}$

Pr(J♠ after Q) = $\frac{6497399}{331367400}$

Pr(Q♡ after Q) $\approx$ 1.96078401195%

$$$$

So because there is a chance that the first Queen is the Queen of Hearts, there is a higher likelihood that the Jack of Spades (rather then the Queen of Hearts) is just after the first queen.

Despite some disagreement over the probabilities, I still believe the point of difference between the two probabilities is that the Queen of Hearts can be chosen as the first queen. Although the probabilistic difference is marginal at best.

Sorry if I've overlooked something that was already pointed out, this just seems like a simple (simpler than the other explanations) explanation of what card is likelier.

  • From P(Jack of Spades after Q)=1/52 it follows directly that P(non-Queen after Q)=48/52. From this it follows that P(Queen after Q)=4/52 and from this it follows that P(Queen of Hearts after Q)=1/52. So your first calculaton with outcome 3/208 must contain a flaw. – drhab Nov 26 '24 at 08:34
  • there can only be 1 of 51 cards directly following the queen, as the queen itself is a card. – A Tasty Apple Pi Nov 26 '24 at 08:56
  • Then what is my mistake in my former comment? Is P(non-Queen after Q)=48/52 correct? Is it correct to conclude from this that P(Queen after Q)=1-48/52=4/52? Is it correct to conclude then on base of symmetry that P(Queen of Hearts after Q)=1/52? – drhab Nov 26 '24 at 09:04
  • On your comment: each specific card can be the one that follows the first queen and there are 52 specific cards. – drhab Nov 26 '24 at 09:12
  • It was my understanding (I could certainly be wrong) that because the card must be after the queen, it must also not be the said queen thus the probability after the queen should be 48/51. Think that if the first queen is, say, the queen of spades, then there is no chance that the next card could be the queen of spades, thus there are only 51 cards that could be after. – A Tasty Apple Pi Nov 26 '24 at 09:56
  • What you mention is exactly why the correct result (which is: P(Queen of Hearts after Q)=1/52=P(Jack of Spades after Q)) is counterintuitive and this question is popular. – drhab Nov 26 '24 at 10:05
  • I'm still not entirely convinced that that is the correct answer, You state that your working applies to both the Queen of Hearts and the Jack (in being 1 / 52), there is still a probability of 1 / 4 that the first queen is the queen of hearts, did you take this into account? Also I'm about to edit my answer as I just realized the first queen cannot be the 52nd card. – A Tasty Apple Pi Nov 26 '24 at 10:37
  • Actually, I'm starting to disagree with my own calculation, I made a small code to test the experimental probability and found the following: 'Queen of Hearts after First Queen was 19260 or 1.926 and Jack of Spades after First Queen was 19228 or 1.9227999999999998 . The number of times the first queen was the Queen of Hearts was 250321 or 25.0321' This showed that although the first queen could be the queen of hearts, the probability of the two events (J of spades or Q of hearts) is essentially the same. – A Tasty Apple Pi Nov 26 '24 at 11:37
  • Try this. Leave out the Jack of Spades and give the 51 other cards a random order. Then expand this to a random order on 52 cards by adding the Jack of Spades randomly. There are 52 possible spots for it and one of them makes it the card that follows the first Queen. So the probability on that event is 1/52. Now realize that this reasoning works for every specific card. If above we replace the Jack of Spades by the Queen of Hearts then with the same reasoning we find 1/52 for the probability that the Queen Hearts is the card that follows the first Queen. Maybe this helps you out. – drhab Nov 26 '24 at 14:29
  • Wow, that does help. I’m so grateful for you phrasing that, I see now what i did wrong. Thankyou for explaining it to me and sorry that I didn’t realise the error of my thinking sooner. – A Tasty Apple Pi Nov 26 '24 at 23:18