The Ipod Shuffle (?)

It's been about a week since I've posted anything up here (I've been working on a doomsday scenario piece concerning the recent escalating violence in the Middle East, but that one isn't ready to go yet), so for now I'm going with the old cliche of what my iPod plays when I set it on random. Only instead of doing the "here are the first five or ten songs that came on" I've decided to track the statistical trends that developed over the course of an entire day. Or something like that. My last exposure to stat was sophomore year in college.

Anyway, as I've noted on here before, my work requires quite a bit of driving. Yesterday alone I had small amounts of business to take care of in five different cities, illustrated below on this cool old-timey map I found online:

During all of the day's driving, I had the iPod on shuffle, and observed some rather peculiar trends that seemingly defy all principles of probability*. Perhaps this is the essence of "randomness?" Some of the more interesting points:

Led Zeppelin - I own only one Zeppelin album in its entirety, Led Zeppelin IV. Of it's 9 tracks, 4 made it to the lineup

Of Montreal - Another one-album band for me, 3 tracks from The Sunlandic Twins appeared.

Counting Crows - 4 songs from across 4 different albums. That's about what I would expect.

Pearl Jam - Only one song played (the version of "Alive" from the Live in NYC bonus disc that came when you preordered Pearl Jam), out of a pool of 233 drawn from 17 different albums.

U2 - Again, just a single track - a b-side from Joshua Tree - from the seven albums worth of material I possess

The Beatles - 6 albums produced just one song, "Polythene Pam." This is a wonderful song that works perfectly in the greater context of Abbey Road, but comes to a jarring hault as a single when not immediately followed up by "She Came in through the Bathroom Window."

Toad the Wet Sprocket - 3 songs from 4 albums. Seems about right.

Mac McCaughan - not a single song from my combined 14 Superchunk and Portastic CDs

R.E.M. - another 0-for. 75 tracks to pick from, and iPod said "Nay"

iTunes Free Singles- of-the-Week - Unfortunately I did not keep an accurate count of these, but by the end of the day I became convinced that they were grossly over-represented. I do download them each week, becasue occassionally they throw a really good song in there. A lot really suck though. I don't know why I even keep them. They only exist to haunt me on long road trips.



* I do vaguely remember from my school days that there are, in fact, certain governing principles in the field of probability. However, I'm currently in no position to deabte the merits or application of said principles. Actually, I was just looking for an excuse to display that map. I've always liked old maps.