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When I play music, or when I look at a slideshow, I like to use the random selection. I have about 1000 songs, and 25000 pictures in my libraries. Taking pictures for example, if I view 100 pictures per day, then it should be 25000/100=250 days, on the average, before I see a repetition of the same picture. What I actually see are certain items repeating 2-3 times in the first 100 day after day.
In fact, it seems like the random shuffle picks a deck of 64 or so items, then randomly selects from that short list. Even harder to explain, even though I restart my apps daily, a few pictures (or songs) appear in the list almost every day, so that there is an apparent bias in the choice of the 64.
By my definition, a random shuffle of N items should look like this on taken from Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher–Yates_shuffle
The problem seems the same using software from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Samsung, and Motorola, and even the AM/FM radio in my boat, and the problem has been around for at least 10 years. Is there a popular open source library for doing random shuffles, that is both ubiquitous to manufacturers, and and so faulty in its design? Or do I misunderstand the meaning of "random" in a playlist?
In fact, it seems like the random shuffle picks a deck of 64 or so items, then randomly selects from that short list. Even harder to explain, even though I restart my apps daily, a few pictures (or songs) appear in the list almost every day, so that there is an apparent bias in the choice of the 64.
By my definition, a random shuffle of N items should look like this on taken from Knuth's Art of Computer Programming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher–Yates_shuffle
The problem seems the same using software from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Samsung, and Motorola, and even the AM/FM radio in my boat, and the problem has been around for at least 10 years. Is there a popular open source library for doing random shuffles, that is both ubiquitous to manufacturers, and and so faulty in its design? Or do I misunderstand the meaning of "random" in a playlist?