Play Solitaire Lab

Bigsby

sample size

Loading audio…

Press play to listen along. The line being read lights up as you go.

Show full transcript

Loading transcript…

01 Opening
Bigsby beat 1 of 5

Bigsby is the biggest animal in the Card Lab. He is a badger, broad and gentle, with a white stripe down his nose and a canvas apron tied around his middle. When he walks between the tables, the floorboards creak a friendly creak. And he is almost always carrying the same thing: a tall, neat stack of face-down cards, held carefully in both paws so not one of them slips.

"More deals," Bigsby likes to say, in his slow, rumbly voice. "Always more deals."

The younger animals sometimes tease him about it. What's the point of so many? they ask. You could test a rule on five deals and be done before lunch.

02 Bigsby
Bigsby beat 2 of 5

Bigsby doesn't mind the teasing. He just smiles and tells them about the Great Five-Deal Mistake.

It happened one spring. A pair of mice tested whether a solitaire rule helped. They ran it on five deals. The new rule won four of them. "Eighty percent!" they squeaked, and they were ready to tell the whole valley.

Bigsby set down his stack and asked them to run the same test again, on five different deals.

This time the new rule won two.

03 Bigsby
Bigsby beat 3 of 5

"Forty percent?" said the mice, bewildered. "But it was eighty a minute ago!"

"With five deals," Bigsby said gently, "luck is loud. One easy deal or one hard deal swings the answer a long way. Your rule might truly win half the time and simply got lucky the first time, and unlucky the second. Five deals can't tell the difference. The honest range is very wide."

The lab's screen can show that range. After a test, it draws a bar called an interval: the stretch of answers the data can really support. With five deals, the mice's bar stretched almost across the whole screen, from a little to a lot. It was like trying to see a far-off hill through thick fog.

"So how do we clear the fog?" asked one mouse.

04 Bigsby
Bigsby beat 4 of 5

Bigsby lifted his tall stack and set it on the table with a soft thump. "We test more deals."

They ran the rule on fifty. The interval shrank, a good way in from both ends. Then they ran it on two hundred, and the interval shrank again, narrower and narrower, until it sat in a tight little band. The fog was lifting. Now they could actually see the hill: the rule helped a little, and they could say so with confidence.

The mice noticed something else too. Going from five deals to fifty narrowed the bar a lot. Going from fifty to two hundred narrowed it a bit less, even though it was far more deals.

"Each new deal helps," Bigsby said, "but the first ones help the most. To make the range half as wide, you need about four times as many deals. That is why you can't just add a handful and call it certain. Sharp answers take a big, patient stack."

05 Closing
Bigsby beat 5 of 5

The mice looked at Bigsby's stack with new respect.

Bigsby feels most like Bigsby at the very end of a long test, when the last deal is played and the interval settles into a thin, clear band. It is a deep, warm, satisfied feeling, like finishing the last bite of a huge meal, or placing the final block on a wall you built yourself. It took a long time. It was worth it.

You have a bit of Bigsby in you whenever you choose to be patient instead of fast. Before you trust an answer, ask whether you tested enough, and say it the way he does: "Bigsby piles on more deals, and the answer comes into focus."

Then keep dealing, one steady card at a time.

Hear it as an audio drama

A short play starring Bigsby, from Solitaire Lab. Different voices, same idea. Listen any time after you read.

Loading audio…

Read the drama script
  1. Narrator: From Spark and Anvil and Solitaire Lab — this is Bigsby, in chapter 1 of the Solitaire Lab cast.
  2. Narrator: This drama uses an AI-generated voice. Voiced via Gemini 2.5.
  3. Narrator: The floorboards of the Card Lab creaked as Bigsby the badger carried his tall stack of face-down cards.
  4. Mouse: Bigsby! Our rule won four out of five deals. That's eighty percent!
  5. Bigsby: Lovely. Would you run it again, on five different deals?
  6. Narrator: They did. This time the rule won only two.
  7. Mouse: Forty percent? Which one is real?
  8. Bigsby: Maybe neither. With five deals, luck is loud. One easy deal or one hard one swings the answer a long way.
  9. Mouse: Then how do we find out?
  10. Bigsby: We deal more. Fifty. Then two hundred.
  11. Narrator: With every batch, the honest range on the screen grew narrower, like fog lifting off a hill.
  12. Mouse: But the second batch helped less than the first.
  13. Bigsby: That's the rule. To make your range half as wide, you need about four times as many deals.
  14. Mouse: Then we'd better keep dealing.
  15. Narrator: Small tests are foggy. Big, patient tests come into focus. That's Bigsby's whole idea.
  16. Narrator: You've been listening to a Spark and Anvil chapter, written by the Spark and Anvil writing team for ages 9 to 14.
  17. Narrator: Apps stay free forever.
  18. Narrator: Curriculum aligned to Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.
  19. Narrator: Released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 for educational reuse. Visit Spark and Anvil for the full transcript.

The Solitaire Lab ensemble

Bigsby is one of the friends in Solitaire Lab. Each friend shows you one idea by how they act; meet them all and you have the whole subject.

Kids also liked

Play TaleForge Play MentalForge Play TraceForge Play VoxelForge Play BugTales Play ScreenForge