What Are the Odds?
I have 169 U2 songs on my computer. I set the media player to randomly play the songs - I started with the live version of 40 from the "Under a Blood Red Sky" album - the very next song shuffled? 40 from the "War" album... What are the odds? Well, about 1 in 168, I guess. But it struck me as funny.
Friday night Lori and I watched a show called Numbers - it was about randomness. The thing that makes "random" play not truly random in my media player is that it will never repeat the same song. While there might not be a discernable "pattern" (there shouldn't be, though our minds often - maybe even always - seek patterns in randomness) it isn't truly a random selector - the pool of possible songs goes down with each song played. I now have a 1 in 165 chance of pulling the third version of 40 I have as the next song... But I can be assured, that the first two versions played will never play again in this "randomized" shuffle...
So what? I don't know, I just thought it funny that I heard the same song twice. I'm always questioning the randomizer on this media player - it will seem to shuttle back and forth between two different albums (say, The Joshua Tree and War) for four or five songs sometimes...
So, I start thinking about God - I mean, after all, that's what I do. So many times "normal" things happen, but if I really think about "the odds" of them occuring, it's almost impossible.
They can be little good things or little bad things... Like, what are the odds that in the same week four people will seemingly randomly comment on something I've done (in a positive way) when months go by when nobody says anything (and I'm not talking about something exceptional that I've done, either...). Or, the odds that Lori would be beset with three very different problems (physically) all at once (not to mention the stress of watching the Steelers lose yesterday...sigh - okay, the odds were pretty good that THAT would happen, but still...)?
I don't know. No answers. Just thinking out loud...or, um...with my fingers?
Friday night Lori and I watched a show called Numbers - it was about randomness. The thing that makes "random" play not truly random in my media player is that it will never repeat the same song. While there might not be a discernable "pattern" (there shouldn't be, though our minds often - maybe even always - seek patterns in randomness) it isn't truly a random selector - the pool of possible songs goes down with each song played. I now have a 1 in 165 chance of pulling the third version of 40 I have as the next song... But I can be assured, that the first two versions played will never play again in this "randomized" shuffle...
So what? I don't know, I just thought it funny that I heard the same song twice. I'm always questioning the randomizer on this media player - it will seem to shuttle back and forth between two different albums (say, The Joshua Tree and War) for four or five songs sometimes...
So, I start thinking about God - I mean, after all, that's what I do. So many times "normal" things happen, but if I really think about "the odds" of them occuring, it's almost impossible.
They can be little good things or little bad things... Like, what are the odds that in the same week four people will seemingly randomly comment on something I've done (in a positive way) when months go by when nobody says anything (and I'm not talking about something exceptional that I've done, either...). Or, the odds that Lori would be beset with three very different problems (physically) all at once (not to mention the stress of watching the Steelers lose yesterday...sigh - okay, the odds were pretty good that THAT would happen, but still...)?
I don't know. No answers. Just thinking out loud...or, um...with my fingers?
Comments