So I'm driving down the freeway yesterday, listening to Moby's cover of "New Dawn Fades" on the iPod, best known as the tune from the Heat soundtrack playing when Hanna pulls over McAuley, and the next song the thing offers up in shuffle mode is the original Joy Division recording of "New Dawn Fades". What are the odds of that?
(One in 512, actually. I just checked.)
Actually, since it would be a permutation (order matters) and not a simple combination, it would be (2x512)-2 I think. I'm not so good with the math, but I know you've got to take into account the odds of the one song playing, then the other, not just the second song playing at any given time.
ReplyDeleteReally would have been impressive if "Synchronicity" had come on right after. Much more impressive, in fact, because I don't imagine you have that particular song on your ipod.
ReplyDelete> What are the odds of that? (One in 512, actually. I just checked.)
ReplyDeleteAnd, in fact, the same two songs in reverse order would strike you as equally weird, so the chance of "a weird thing of this type happening involving those two songs" is actually one in 256.
Mike Gallo writes:
> Actually, since it would be a permutation (order matters) and not a simple combination, it would be (2x512)-2 I think
Yes, but only if neither song had yet played, Tam asked "what are the chances of the NEXT TWO SONGS being those two?".
Given that the question only comes up after the first song plays, Tam is right that the chance is 1 in 512.
Or, as per my comment above, 1 in 256.
I wrote " had yet played,"
ReplyDeletewhen I meant " had ** NOTE ** yet played"
og,
ReplyDelete"Much more impressive, in fact, because I don't imagine you have that particular song on your ipod."
There's some stuff from The Police on this playlist, but not that particular cut. It's on the computer at home, though.
We once had a poltergeist in our winamp that loved "Thriller" by Michael Jackson. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteThere were a few songs worth listening to that came out of the 80's.
ReplyDeleteOh?
ReplyDelete(If a piece of music was written after, say, 1949, I am deeply suspicious of it. Among other things, there's no telling who touched on it last).
Take a look at who touched some of the things written before 1949 and you'll be pretty suspicious too. Ever see what that Mozart guy was up to? Liszt sold dog hair as his own, Tchaikovsky had to hold his head on while he conducted. The Big Bands had been instrumental in the whole practice of Payola, Ozzie Lenson couldn't even read music!!
ReplyDeleteBS in music is not new. BS in everything is not new. It just comes at you faster the older you get.
1 in 511, assuming she has 512 tracks on her iPod. iPods won't play the same song back to back, so there is only a choice of 511 songs to choose from.
ReplyDeleteI've had Miles Davis's Equinox come up right after the band Clutch's cover of the same song. The sad thing is, up until that moment I hadn't realized they were the same song. They're just played so differently I never connected the dots.
ReplyDeleteGood call on Equinox anonymouse.
ReplyDeleteEighties music makes great soundtracks. I wasn't a fan of Wang Chung but their soundtrack for "To Live and Die in L.A." just works.
ReplyDelete