Final answer:
To calculate 50% of 52 using mental math, you divide the number by 2, which equals 26. This means there are 26 red cards in a standard deck.
Step-by-step explanation:
To find 50% of a number using mental math, you simply divide the number by 2. In this case, to find 50% of 52, you would calculate 52 divided by 2. The calculation is straightforward: 52 / 2 = 26. Therefore, there are 26 red cards in a standard deck. This is because a deck consists of four suits - clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades - with diamonds and hearts being the red suits. Since there are 13 cards in each suit, there are a total of 26 red cards, representing half of the deck. This principle is often used in probability to ensure that certain events are guaranteed to happen given a certain number of trials or selections. It's a useful tool in various mathematical and computational contexts.