Saturday, October 07, 2006

"We're making it less random to make it feel more random."

Maybe we should use the iPod to explain all concepts in theoretical computer science:
Steven Levy really liked Steely Dan, but so too, it seemed, did his iPod. Like a lot of people, he began to wonder about its shuffle - was the random function really random or a result of dirty tricks, blunders... or even telepathy?
Read more about it at the Guardian (HT: The Mathematics Weblog)




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2 comments:

  1. Ipod users discover Kolmogorov Complexity. When a user says random, he just doesn't mean "with uniform probability" but actually means "with no discernible pattern", i.e. Kolmogorov random. 

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