I switched my ipod on random yesterday to hear the Magnetic Fields 'I thought i was your boyfriend', the version from the album followed by a dance remix from the single.
The probability of this is roughly one in a million (I have 1097 songs, so technically it's 1 in 1.2 million).
It made me wonder how random is 'random' (presumably it's based on some sort of mathsy formula that imitates randomness). Any ideas / similar stories? Or is this possibly the dullest thread ever.
Doesn't matter, forget it.
The chance of getting that song 2nd,
given that you got the other song 1st, is exactly the same as getting any other song 2nd.
not how it works.
Um,
yes it is. Assuming it is genuinely random, of course...
Why do people say this
I don't believe it, like saying getting 37, 37, 37 is as equally likely as getting say 15, 12, 4 in balckjack- rubbish.
It's like when they say heads is equally likely to come up 10 million times ina row as say h,t,h,t,t,t,t,h,h,t,h,t,h,th,t,h,h,t,
And also seen as how you toss it a subtly different presumably (if you got a machine to toss it it would be always the same wouldn't it where it landed assuming coin faced same way etc) In other words it would never be heads all the time, the probability is bullshit
So to summarise, there is no such thing as random
If
you got that exact combination when randomly tossing a coin it would indeed be as freaky as if you got all heads and all tails.
That's why winning the lottery is so dammned difficult.
To summarise, you are wrong and I am dull.
Yeah but when has the lottery ever been 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
?
Maybe for lottery but In don;t beleieve you can get say hundred heads in a row
People say it
because it is undeniable fact.
Other people disagree because they are wrong.
dullest thread ever
it is annoying though
surely it is 1 in 1097
No... it would be 1 in 1096
if i was already listening to the first song.
Sitching it on, to hear one followed by the other is 1 in 1.2 million...
I think...
actually, i'd say it's closer to 1 in 1096
since what came first doesn't really matter, unless beforehand you said "right, that song followed by that song"
And i assume it is completely random, unless Apple has some cynical programming which makes it choose particular artists as a promotional tool. What you're talking about is technically referred to as a "coinkeedink"
I hear you
I don't think it is purely random, I've noticed it often focuses on certain albums in shuffles.
in the preferences you can change the randomness
to truly random, more likely to hear songs by same artist, and less likely and everywhere inbetween
So you can
cheers for that. This thread has been most useful.
'truly random' must still be
'calculated' by some sort of sine-curve / finite random number generating table...
So I'd say it's more pseudo-random.
Not...
... that dull! I'm quite interested in the theory of random number generation. I read that a lot of random generation software uses Pi as a method to create random selections. Not sure what kind of method iPods use though. Anyone?
Some more on Pi and random generation:
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/2005/050426.Fischbach.pi.html
As taken from Slashdot
"Steven Levy at Newsweek is reporting that his iPod Shuffle seems to favor certain songs (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6854309/site/newsweek/). Is Apple receiving kickbacks to promote certain artists? Apple denies it, of course, and Levy had the good sense to ask a mathmatician and a cryptographer who explained that it's probably just humans finding patterns where there are none."
Scroll past the crap joke comments at the start and marvel at how wound up some people got on this subject:
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/26/0253240&tid=141&tid=3
2 frank zappa songs came on yesterday
in order, from the concept album "apostrophe", so it was as if I was actually listening to it because the tracks sort of merge. Weird.
I'd take a hammer to it mate,
surely the only way of mathematically ensuring you never get two consecutive Zappa's ever again.
ooooh, zappaburn.
Put ur ipod on shuffle
Play a song
skip 3 songs
Play 1st song again
skip 3 songs
you will have the same end result, thus meaning its never truely random as its generatred a list already.
I mean on itunes
I dont know if this is true for ipod but it probably is
That doesn't mean it's not random
When you click shuffle, it does exactly that and forms a list. Then the thing you describe will happen, yes, but it's *how* it forms the list that determines whether it's random.
Turn shuffle off and then back on and you'll get a different list.
I know the list is randomly generated
but it aint exactly random there after now is it :)
Thats why iPod/iTunes ends up looping on music sometimes.
That may mean it has the same random seed
Anyway there isn't such a thing as truly random.
In regard to the first post, it isn't that odd that it played the remix of the song straight after. You must have had loads and loads of times that you have listened to a song and the remix of it hasn't come on.
But that's the point surely
you would expect it to play a song that is not a remix of the song - since the other thousandish songs aren't.
I just think, from talking to others, this kind of event happens more than random probability would suggest. (E.g. a string of songs by the same artist or cover versions by different artists.) These events should only really happen once in a lifetime.
It's quite easy to see patterns when they're aren't necesserily any.
It is quite easy to remember the times when odd stuff like this happens but you forget the number of times it doesn't. The chances of having a similar artist being played again are not that low, but you would be fairly likely to remember that happening and as things are random stuff like this will happen at chance sometimes.
Not that this is necessarily the case here. I guess apple could have some clever 'random' algorithm but I doubt it.
no
with computers there's no such thing as "random". there's always some sort of algorithm that works out the sequence in which your song plays, and that algorithm will always (eventually) do shit like this.
True
but it would always (eventually) do shit like this even if it were possible to have a computer generate randomness. Just statistics 'n' shit, eh?
^this
although stuff like that track coming up isnt a mistake. its just as 'random' as any other track coming up.
I once got all of 69 Love Songs in order
NOT!!!!
Thanks for starting this thread
as I too have wanted to know this ever since getting an iPod for my birthday.
I've now filled about a third of the 80GB up with songs and stuff yet nearly every time I switch it to shuffle, the same stuff comes up LOADS.
For instance, it seems to love The Fall. Every second song it chose this lunchtime was The Fall. But they take up a LOT less than 50% of the music on my iPod. So why does it select The Fall as every second or third song EVERY TIME I shuffle my iPod?
I'm sure it's possessed.
*non-quantum computers
windows media player
a few version ago
used to have terrible "random" mode, that always meant that if i listened to one song, the next song "randomly" chosen was the same
yeah I think that was crap because
it randomly chose the next song by the track time or name or something like that (that doesn't vary) so it could get stuck in a loop.
Maybe
you should just be glad you got to hear 'I Thought You Were My Boyfriend' twice in a row.
^ the most sensible reply
to this regrettable thread!
I don't believe in God or fate
Does that help?
it will help you find some common ground
if you ever randomly meet christopher hitchens.
My
ipod shuffles by genre. Fact.
My iPod shuffles according to the waist size of the singer's jeans......
PJ Harvey at the front and Damian from Fucked Up at the back.
two points.
1. no, there isn't. computers cannot generate truly random numbers. as an example, poker websites generate the hands which are dealt by doing some complex mathematical procedure with data such as time and the position of people's cursors and so on. basically, so much arbitrary data that it is virtually random.
2. that particular sequence of songs is no more unlikely than any other. similarly, 15 heads in a row on a tossed coin is no more unlikely than any other sequence. its merely that we attribute significance to a run of heads or a run of tails where we don't to a less ordered sequence. it isn't that one is more or less likely, more that we notice the pattern of one where we don't the other.
Great reply.
*non-quantum computers
my bad.
at first this thrad did actually seem quite interesting
but suddenly got amazingly dull as i scrolled down
On my ipod
I very very often get some songs on shuffle, and others I never get. I also often get 4 songs in a row by the same artist.
When I do random
on a playlist, eventually you will see it do full circle and start playing the same sequence of 'random' tracks, so you are correct, dullest thread ever.
You can't even complain to them, either.
"This isn't random!"
...
"Isn't it?"
OH MY GOD
THIS THREAD IS COMICALLY BORING.
But what I will say is that all those millions of dreadful extra tracks (nasal sketches, songs recorded in sheds, discarded 1st drafts, Elvis straining on the toilet etc...) on the Elvis Costello Rhino reissues have a horrible habit of appearing on 'random' at all too regular intervals. Although that's because there are millions of them.
If I may take the liberty of diverting the thread somewhat.... does anybody have a rule with themselves that they CAN'T skip tracks on shuffle. It can be fun. Until Hymie's Him by P.I.L. or Bitches Brew by Miles Davis comes on....
I do it to the best of my ability when I'm sitting in the library
Sometimes
However I share my iTunes library with my sister. I don't want Paramore or Scouting for Girls using my ear muscles!
This kind of thing
happens a lot more often than you'd reckon. There's some weird fact that if you have 38 people in a room, there's a 50% chance that two of them will have the same birthday. Beyond that, I don't care.
I wish my typing would go screwy when I was drunk, then people'd be able to tell. But it just doesn't..
Actually
it's 23, if you have 23 people in the room the probability that two will share the same birthday is 0.507.
With regards to the randomness it's partially due to the not quite random nature of the algorithms and partly due to seeing patterns where there aren't. Your iPod doesn't know that John Lennon was in The Beatles or that "Dub Be Good To Me" samples "Guns of Brixton" but when you hear them next to each other people tend to attribute a significance. Likewise if you use the random number generator on a calculator there are numbers that people find less random like 0.123, 0.222, 0.246, 0.321 and so on.
It's a
0.0001% chance.
Which is exactly the same probability as it playing any other song next (assuming that song is on your ipod). SPPOOOOOKKKKYYYYYY
Or, in other words, -dan- is right.