Shuffle, Randomized, Pseudorandom, or Smart Playlist?

The first page of this article is infuriating to read because I know he has been or should be getting to this conlcusion the whole time. What kind of random do you prefer? My favorite is a random walk through a smart playlist I have composed based on recent listening, recent additions, forgotten tracks, and my own most popular tracks. My iPod may not do this exacctly, but that's what it feels like when I shuffle by song in that smart playlist. Sometimes I shuffle by song, but some days it's by whole albums. Taking into account the beats per minute or personal rating or a song can also help make a pseudorandom playlist more smooth and appealing.

Wired News: My IPod for a Random Playlist:

The problem, it turns out, isn't that the programs aren't randomizing my playlists. They are. According to Jeff Lait, a mathematician and author of randomm3u, it's what's happening between my ears, specifically, in my expectations of what it means for something to be random.

To illustrate his point, Lait referred to a phenomenon statisticians call the birthday paradox. Roughly stated, it holds that if there are 23 randomly selected people in a room, there is a better than 50-50 chance that at least two of them will have the same birthday. The point: Mathematical randomness often contradicts our intuitive expectations of randomness.

In related random matters of shuffling;

• How To Shuffle and Cut a Deck of Cards One-Handed || kuro5hin.org
• Maths is Fun | MetaFilter

[ nerd music tech random ipod math ]