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Shuffle 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 a

Shuffle 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.