Statistics and Order/Sequence

[RSLancastr]

As I've sad (and demonstrated) before, statistics is not exactly my strong suit. So I would appreciate some help with this...

With a standard, shuffled deck of 52 playing cards, the odds of getting dealt the A/K/Q/J/10 of spades, in that order, is calculated as:

one in (52 * 51 * 50 * 49 * 48)

But the order in which your cards are dealt is meaningless to the hand you end up with.

So then, are the odds of getting dealt those five cards in ANY order calculated as follows?

(5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1) in (52 * 51 * 50 * 49 * 48)

I ask this mainly because I have seen lottery odds calculated in the first way, even when the order shouldn't matter.

 

[Tez]

The simplest way to think about it, is to realse that there are 120 different ways of arranging the cards AKQJ10. Thus your odds are improved by this overall factor - since as you correctly point out, they do not need to be dealt in this order...