25 ms·
Random is random, shuffle is shuffle. They are different things.
by ahoka 3y ago
Random is random, shuffle is shuffle. They are different things.
- uxp8u61q 3y ago"Random" doesn't necessarily mean "uniformly distributed random." Shuffling a deck of cards randomly is random, but you're not going to get the same card twice in a row, or even the same card twice until you go through the whole deck.
- Karellen 3y agoDo you re-shuffle after the deck is exhausted, or after every hand? It's not excessively unusual to be dealt the same card twice in two consecutive hands.
- uxp8u61q 3y agoWho said anything about hands? I'm trying to make an analogy between shuffling a deck and shuffling xkcd comics. I thought having a visual, physical analogue would perhaps help in seeing that randomness still exists in a shuffle.
- Karellen 3y agoSorry, the point I was trying to make was "shuffle" could possibly mean "re-shuffle after every track" - so you could still get the same track twice in a row. (It was a bad way of stating it, that's on me)
- uxp8u61q 3y agoShuffling the whole playlist to choose a new song every time is no different than choosing uniformly from all songs every time. What would be the point? I can't tell what you are getting at.
- Karellen 3y agoMy point is that, for a not-unreasonable interpretation of "shuffle", it is the same as "random". nvm
- KMag 3y agoAnd a uniform random shuffle chooses any of the N! orderings with equal probability. One is looking at a single element as the output of the process, and another is looking at the entire list as the output of the process. Also, there are plenty of non-uniform random distributions.