| ▲ | pegasus 5 hours ago | ||||||||||||||||
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. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | nkrisc 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
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. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | coldtea 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
>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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| ▲ | topaz0 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | ||||||||||||||||
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. | |||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | jonathanstrange 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | ||||||||||||||||
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. | |||||||||||||||||