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pegasustoday at 10:38 AM4 repliesview on HN

It's not that a random shuffling of songs doesn't sound random enough, it's that certain reasonable requirements besides randomness don't hold. For example, you'd not want hear the same track twice in a row, even though this is bound to happen in a strictly random shuffling.


Replies

nkrisctoday at 11:13 AM

Random shuffling of songs usually refers to a randomized ordering of a given set of songs, so the same song can’t occur twice in a row if the set only contains unique items. People don’t usually mean an independent random selection from the set each time.

coldteatoday at 1:56 PM

>For example, you'd not want hear the same track twice in a row, even though this is bound to happen in a strictly random shuffling.

Why would it be? A random shuffling of a unique set remains a unique set.

It's only when "next song is picked at random each time from set" which you're bound to hear the same song twice, but that's not a random playlist shuffling (shuffling implies the new set is created at once).

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topaz0today at 1:46 PM

You could think of it as wanting your desire to hear the song again build up to a sufficient level to make it worth a relisten, sort of how a bus driver might want potential passengers to accumulate at a bus stop before picking them up, and therefore delay arrival. Very plausible to me that a good music randomization would have similar statistics if you phrase it right.

jonathanstrangetoday at 10:47 AM

If the list of songs is random shuffled, you can only hear the same song twice if there is a duplicate or if you've cycled through the whole list. That's why you shuffle lists instead of randomly selecting list elements.