How the brain perceives a random selection of songs Bashny.Net

Sometimes, listening to the songs in random order, and then suddenly, one after the other songs sound the same group. What a mess? What a random order? Such issues arise in the normal human brain that completely adapted to the perception of accidents .

For example, if you take a playlist of 30 songs: 10 songs for each of the three performers A, B and C, the random sequence might look like this:

AABCBACABBCCACCCCABBACBACABABB

The brain will be outraged at such a random sequence, particularly in the middle of the block, where 6 of the 7 songs are reserved executor C.

It is well known that as a result of the evolution of the brain learned to find the relationship between any and completely unrelated events (comet flew - the war began; come new director of the company - shares fell / rose. See also the phenomenon of "people's signs"). We recognize the images where they are not. This is due to the great ability of the brain to recognize the images, because of what has to put up with a lot of false positives.

Such features are thinking interfere with normal random perceive music, and not just her. The phenomenon is very well known in the gaming industry, he even got its name - ложный conclusion Monte Carlo or "player error." It is connected with the fact that people usually do not realize intuitively that the probability of the outcome of a random event does not depend on previous outcomes. Most people seem intuitive that if the roulette several times fell black color, then the probability of getting a red increases.

When it comes to music services, developers have to solve the problem. For example, developers Spotify last year изменили algorithm issuing random songs , so he de facto ceased to be random. But does not irritate the listeners.

Now the algorithm takes into account each artist and evenly distributes it throughout the song playlist. Spotify hopes to reduce the number of complaints that the service is ostensibly "promotes" individual performers, putting their songs more often than others.

P.S. More details about the algorithm Balanced Shuffle cm. here .

Source: geektimes.ru/post/246162/