nanzi wrote:

During a simple gathering, a woman (near 50 of age) was astonished to see that some kids were gathered and were happily playing cards. She asked me, “How can they be playing cards?”

Just a few days ago, my other half expressed incredulity at her tutee’s ignorance of “clubs” and “spades” or the number of ‘J’s and ‘K’s within a deck of cards. Apparently, the mathematics question she was explaining dealt with probability and made used of a deck of playing cards as a scenario.

Given the hostile climate against playing cards in most educational institutions — I heard the more “premier” schools have saner rules; some even have bridge clubs — I suddenly wondered why was knowledge of the contents assumed of all mathematics students in the first place?