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This is also an example of users saying they want one thing (randomness) when really they want something else (variety).
by drewrv 9y ago
This is also an example of users saying they want one thing (randomness) when really they want something else (variety).
- Sholmesy 9y agoBoth this and the GP are great lessons in software design.
- nkrisc 9y agoGreat example of finding what users really want as opposed to what they say they want.
- stubish 9y agoOr a great example of how things fail when producers and consumers don't use the same language. If you don't understand the language your consumers are speaking, you are not going to produce what they want. So next time some one tells you their computer is broken, don't reply saying it appears to be in one piece.
- Tarq0n 9y agoThis sounds like a giant strawman to me. Where do programmers get the idea that a mode called 'shuffle' would call for sampling with replacement? The obvious software analogy to shuffling would be re-ordering a list randomly, not randomly drawing from a list. I think this whole shuffling meme started with Spotify's engineers misunderstanding what they were asked to do, then claiming their customers don't know what they want when they obviously delivered the wrong feature.
- cestith 9y agoShuffle and weighted random both give a better chance of variety than truly random. Shuffle is cheaper to calculate in terms of storage space. The article is about weighting randomness based on past distribution. In a music playlist that may be enough. Some user might also want a term in the equation that weights songs they've rated highly to be favored over lower-rated or unrated songs.
- gpawl 9y ago"truly random" refers to how well a real distribution matches its intended distribution. So, a long cycle is not truly random, because many desired outcomes are physically possible to obtain. This is orthognal to the choice of distributon. Shuffle and Weighted Sampling are different choices of distribution.
- xg15 9y agoThis - and possibly also a reminder that the same words may mean different things for people with different backgrounds. If someone with no specialized knowledge about math and probability requests their songs in a "random" order, I don't think one should assume they are insisting on an order sampled from a uniform distribution.
- mulmen 9y ago"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." - Henry Ford
- Jasper_ 9y agoBecause the casual definition of "random" means "without a discernible pattern", which multiple artists in a row doesn't handle. Music shuffle algorithms sometimes go lengths to avoid patterns and duplicate artists.