Never tell me the odds

Ever since I got my first iPod back in 2004, I’ve had a sinking feeling that it “thinks”. I’m not going so far as to say it has any sort of virtual intelligence, but every once in a while, when listening to the iPod on shuffle, it would put 2 songs in a row that seemed too much of a coincidence. For example, it might play “Pale Blue Eyes” by The Velvet Underground, and the next song would be a cover of “Pale Blue Eyes” by R.E.M. Or I’d hear 3 songs in a row that all had the word “Sun” in their title. Considering I have over 5,000 songs on my iPod, to me these instances seemed too random to just be a coincidence. Another weird occurrence just happened recently. I was in Starbucks one morning on the way to work and heard a rare Radiohead song that I hadn’t heard in a while: “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box”. Usually Starbucks has crappy music on, but this caught my attention, and I said to myself, “Okay, it’s going to be a Radiohead day at work.” So when I got there I put all my Radiohead on shuffle, and sure enough, the first song to play? “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box”. (For the math geeks out there, I have a total of 81 Radiohead songs on my iPod, so there was a 1.2% chance that song would be the 1st to be played.)

So that story leads me to another story. I was flipping through a Boston Magazine a couple weeks ago and saw a small column in which they take a local “celebrity’s” iPod, put it on shuffle, and list the 1st 10 songs that pop off. (And by celebrity, it seems to be folks like bartenders, museum curators, or the equipment manager for the Bruins.) I thought this might be interesting for a recurring blog – every month do a shuffle of my iPod, see what 10 songs come off first, and write 1,000 words about nothing. So this morning on the way to work, I put the entire iPod on shuffle, and made a note of the 1st 10 songs.

The first song to play was “God Save the Queen” by The Sex Pistols. Nothing too interesting, I probably haven’t heard this song in a couple years, as it’s not on my normal rotation – but a good song to get the blood going on the drive in. But then my iPod had to freak me out. WAY out. Song # 2 was “My My, Hey Hey” by Neil Young. Many of you are probably wondering, “Okay, why would this freak you out?” It’s because “My My, Hey Hey” has the following lyrics:

“The king is gone, but he’s not forgotten
This is the story of Johnny Rotten.”

And what band did Johnny Rotten famously play for? The Sex Pistols, of course! So let’s look at the probability of all of this happening. First, the probability that a Sex Pistols song even plays on my iPod is very rare – I have 5,550 songs on my iPod this morning, and only 2 of them were from The Sex Pistols. That’s a % of 0.036%. But SOME song had to be the first, so that’s not anything to get freaked out about. But let’s say The Sex Pistols is song #1. What are the chances that song #2 would have any sort of connection to song #1? Johnny Rotten, now known as John Lydon (and also a HUGE Arsenal fan – Get In There!) was also singer of the band Public Image, Ltd, but I have zero PIL songs on my iPod. Neither do I have any music from any of the other bands the members of The Sex Pistols joined after the band broke up. However, I do have 2 versions of the UK National Anthem “God Save the Queen” on my iPod. Also, Neil Young has another version of “My My, Hey Hey” called “Hey Hey, My My”, in which he talks about Johnny Rotten again. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any other song that mentions The Sex Pistols, nor do I have the soundtrack to “Sid and Nancy” on my iPod. So if I was looking for any music that has a real close connection to song #1, I come to a total count of 5 (“Anarchy in the UK” by The Sex Pistols, “Hey Hey, My My” by Neil Young, and the 2 versions of “God Save the Queen”.) So out of 5,549 songs, a chance one of those 5 would show up would be 5 in 5,549, or 0.09%. But one can’t just look at those odds, as for the link between the two to happen, BOTH scenarios had to occur. (Meaning, I first had to have one of the 2 Sex Pistols song come on, and then I had to have one of the 5 “connecting” songs immediately follow.) So if I’m doing my math correctly (and I failed more than 1 math course in college, so that's not a good assumption), the % chance of this happening is really 0.0000325%, or a chance of 1 in 3,079,695. I wanted to put this in perspective, so I looked up the odds of winning Mega Millions. They are:

Mega Ball, no other balls: 1 in 75
Mega Ball + 1 other ball: 1 in 141
3 Balls, no Mega Ball: 1 in 306
Mega Ball + 2 other balls: 1 in 844
Mega Ball + 3 other balls: 1 in 13,781
4 Balls, no Mega Ball: 1 in 15,313
(Note: Sage and I actually hit this one once while in NC. It was actually pretty wild, because the FIRST FOUR numbers on the ticket were the FIRST FOUR numbers of the winning numbers. To make matters worse, the 5th ball was only off by 1 (!!), and the Mega Ball was off by 4 or 5.)
Mega Ball + 4 other balls: 1 in 689,065
5 Balls, no Mega: 1 in 3,904,701
Mega Ball + 5 other balls: 1 in 175,711,536

So the probability of those 1st two songs being played on my iPod this morning is only slightly worse than winning $250,000 in the Mega Millions. What did this pay off? Just a blog that you’re reading. (And please, if anyone sees a problem with my math, or logic, leave a comment and let me know. I really did fail 2 math classes in college, but to my credit, both were varying levels of Differential Equations.)

So, with that behind me, I continued to track my first 10 iPod shuffle songs. And wouldn’t you know it, another strange coincidence popped up.

#3: “Johnny B. Goode”, Phish (From Madison Square Garden show, 12-31-95)
#4: “Evenflow”, Pearl Jam
#5: “The Song is You”, Charlie Parker
#6: “A Who A Say”, Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers
#7: “Slave Driver”, Bob Marley & the Wailers

And here was connection #2. I only have 13 Ziggy Marley songs on my iPod, and only 33 Bob Marley songs. So once Ziggy played, there was a 33 in 5,544 chance that a Bob Marley song would play, or 0.595%. Pretty low, but this is kind of like hitting a 1-outer on the river to cooler another player at a poker table. It’s rare, but it happens.

#8: “Bastards of Young”, The Replacements
#9: “The Modern Age”, The Strokes
#10: “Tommy Got His Tonsils Out”, The Replacements

Another rare coincidence -- 2 Replacements songs both showing up in the first 10, as I only have 46 total Replacement songs on my iPod. But this one seemed like the “normal” coincidences that I get with my iPod, so probably not worth trying to calculate the odds here.

So that’s my random iPod shuffle for March. A bit surprised by what showed up, but not a bad reflection of my tastes. I do have a lot of Phish on my iPod, I like jazz and reggae a lot, and I’m an aging-80’s hipster, which is reflected as well. I’ll try to remember to do this once a month (yeah, like that “Shot Glass of the Month” blog that has had 2 updates in the past year…) and see if anything else is freaking me out.