Sally having the Crazy Frog buzzer and saying she can hear the noise from Pac-Man scratching her ear was one of my favourite moments on QI XL, I love her so much. Bill once again with his knowledge on birds is one my favourite facts on QI XL.

@josephchambers2000

Ай бұрын

I just tried that, it kinda works.

Most of what humans perceive to be random is just our ignorance of the underlying physics.

@zapkvr

Ай бұрын

Seeing patterns which are meaningless is inherent in our brain

Well now I'll be doing this to my ear all day.

Cloudflare uses a wall of 100 lava lamps to generate random information for internet security. There's a really interesting video of it here on YT, the title is: The Lava Lamps That Help Keep The Internet Secure

@lelandrb

14 күн бұрын

they wrote a blog post recently expanding on it, too

Spotify may not be random, but this clip was about as random as humanly possible (which isn't all that random afterall).

I have a Spotify playlist that's now got 2500 songs in it. I know for a fact that there are a couple of songs i added about 5 years ago that it has refused to play even once on shuffle, while there are lots of songs added after that have played many times

@brianbarber5401

Ай бұрын

Which would be a random result. If you got every song every year or something like that, it wouldn’t be random.

@brianfunt2619

Ай бұрын

@@brianbarber5401 But the point they bring up is shuffle is designed to not be completely random, it's supposed to "mix things up". And even if it was random, let's say I've sampled 10,000 times from the playlist over 5 years (which is like listening to 5-6 songs every day on average). The rough probability that 2 specific songs were not played at all during this time would be (2498/2500)^10000 which is 0.03%

@danochy5522

29 күн бұрын

Yeah, but more relevant would be the probability that any two songs wouldn't be selected, not two specific songs. You've chosen those two specific songs because they haven't been played, surely. Unless you decided ahead of time, 5 years ago, that you'd follow the progress of just here two songs.

@danochy5522

29 күн бұрын

And that probably would be much higher, assuming a Gaussian distribution

@brianfunt2619

29 күн бұрын

@@danochy5522 True, but I have kind of been following the progress of those two songs as they a somewhat outliers in terms of date of release or genre in that playlist

Alan to Stephen, After Bill says "Lepidoptera": Press him on how the hell he knows that Stephen Interupts Bill: In Alan's world knowing things is some kind of freakish thing Bill: Welcome to my world of knowing; my wonderful world of looking things up in books Alan: You looked it up in a book?! Bill: No, no...

And THIS is the most intelligent show on tv...

Wow. I actually reached out to Spotify about hearing the same song 3, or maybe it was 4 times in a 9 hour work shift in the punk rock genre. They said, yeah? And? I’ve been with Apple Music since. It’s not the biggest genre, but come on.

I am *certain* that Stephen presented this exact same story and factoid with iPod instead of Spotify in one of the early seasons.

Word of the day: stochastic

@stevevasta

Ай бұрын

"Oooooh!"

@Venomonomonom

Ай бұрын

I'm gonna forget it unless I'm given a definition. Oh Bill said it now

I swear the birds I heard in France had a French accent

Why would not playing last week's numbers be beneficial? Aren't they just as likely as any other sequence to come up?

@Michael75579

Ай бұрын

Yes, but if other people are doing the same you'll be sharing your prize with a huge number of people. You have no control over which numbers come up, so all you can do is try to minimise how many people you'll be sharing with if you are successful. As Sandy said, make sure you've got at least one number above 31 so you won't be sharing with people who play their birthdays. Play 13 as there are a lot of superstitious idiots who'll avoid it. Play a couple of consecutive numbers as people think they're less likely to happen. 1,2,3,4,5,6 is just as likely as any other combination but I would never play it as there are apparently a few thousand tickets sold for that combination every week. I usually only play the lottery after multiple rollovers have built the prize up to a substantial sum. When I do play I pick an entirely different set of numbers each time, selected at the time I buy the ticket, so I'm never in the situation where my numbers come up and I haven't bought a ticket that week.

I'd add the London mayorial

@davidguthary8147

Ай бұрын

Which London mayor are we talking about here?

@PianoKwanMan

Ай бұрын

@@davidguthary8147 How many Mayors does London have? *Klaxon incoming*

It seems they and the comments seem to largely or completely ignore that “random” is a poorly defined description, as it could be uniformly random, Gaussian, or lots of other things.

Randomness doesn't exist in our world, everything is the result of physics that we can understand. What we do have is chaos, where things can be unpredictable.

@Paul-zk2tn

29 күн бұрын

Depends really. Particles (classically) will behave in predictable ways every single time, if we know the exact properties of the particles involved. Is the universe deterministic?

If you count up all the numbers in the lotto each week, you get a pretty good normal distribution. So, 1-6 or 45-50 is less likely to happen. So, Total somewhere around 175 with numbers 1-50

Brownian motion. Spotify isn't random, it recommends from a finite list based of a finite set of selection criteria. The shuffle is pseudo-random.

@zapkvr

Ай бұрын

Was explained with reference to a cup of really hot tea in the epidode of Hitchhikers that introduced the infinite improbability drive

@angrytedtalks

Ай бұрын

@@zapkvr Absolutely. But I couldn't get hold of a Bambleweenie 57 Sub-meason brain or an atomic vector plotter to suspend in the tea...

Where I live the only times of the day birdsong is relaxing is at sunrise and at sunset. The rest of the day it's seagulls screaming their heads off giving us a headache and pigeons which sounds like mongoloid birds to me.

Scientifically, there is no such thing as random. Everything is determined by the level of chaos in a system or "entropy".

@tompw3141

Ай бұрын

The decay of an individual atomic nucleus is random.

I guess the question is more about the difference between randomness and pseudorandomness.

I know it’s heresy, but I await the day Bill cuts his hair.

@peterclarke7240

Ай бұрын

What on earth are you on about?! Bill is famously bald, and as such can NEVER cut his hair, not even his mullet.

@Domihork

Ай бұрын

Oh you mean the bald man with the long hair? (if you get that reference, you win :D )

There's no reason why playing last week's numbers is any less random than any other random set of numbers. The chance for any set of numbers to come up will be the same as the chance for last week's numbers to come up.

@MeppyMan

Ай бұрын

Correct. This is an example of the gamblers fallacy.

@hombrearena

Ай бұрын

It also serves as an illustration of how unlikely you are to win. The odds of winning are the same as the likelihood that they will draw the exact same numbers as last week.

@davidmurrell5143

Ай бұрын

No the point wasn't you were more or less likely to win, it was if you were to win you were more likely to share the winnings, because so many people (for some reason) play last week's numbers.

@MeppyMan

Ай бұрын

@@davidmurrell5143 I just watched it again and you’re right. That was the point being made. I’d question if this was statistically significant though. I suspect the point was meant to be how silly that is that people do that (when it’s not really silly), but it got merged into a suggestion that those numbers get chosen more than others. Feel like I need to write and ask for the them to clarify 🤣

I love Sally. Beautiful 😍

I always hate when they say "people can't understand what's random" - it's not people, it's idiots. People who did understand that playlists were still being random when they pick the same song three times in a row just didn't complain about it. Equally, it is a legitimate criticism of a shuffling playlist algorithm to say you don't want that to happen. Saying "I don't want to listen to the same song three times in a row, please make a better algorithm where that doesn't happen" is not the same thing as saying "I don't understand probability, please belittle me instead of addressing the issue I'm actually complaining about"

@hewhosayszonk

28 күн бұрын

It's not just "idiots" who don't understand randomness, humans are overall very bad at identifying or simulating randomness

There was hardly anything about Spotify in this video.

Actually, computers are pretty bad at doing random, and instead randomness is simulated on the computer with various techniques.

@Chocomint_Queen

Ай бұрын

Computers are actually perfectly good at doing random. Every computer these days has a proper hardware entropy source random number generator built into the motherboard so it can encrypt passwords properly, and even without it, pseudo-RNG is perfectly suitable for shuffling a music playlist. Setting aside "computers can't do random" as an outdated quip from people who don't keep up, the _weakest_ PRNG in modern use, developed back in 1997, has a period of 4.3×10^6001. Which is to say, if your playlist is four millinillion, three hundred novenonagintanongentillion songs long, _one_ song would be out of order compared to a true random number. PRNG weaknesses are on the scale of "if an enemy nation is trying to crack our security", not "my playlist shuffled weird". For those following along at home, that's 430000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

@macsnafu

Ай бұрын

@@Chocomint_Queen Well, that was overkill, but I can understand OCD. Thanks for the update!

@MeppyMan

Ай бұрын

it’s actually not completely settled science. It’s just what we currently understand.

Why didn't the QI elves research if it has actually ever happened somewhere in the world that the same lottery numbers came up two weeks in a row? As this is the official QI channel I hope they see this and will come back with an answer....

@AnttiBrax

Ай бұрын

It hasn't happened. We would have heard of the riots.

@MeppyMan

Ай бұрын

The odds are the same as any other combination. You are no less or more likely to win if you pick the same numbers.

@ArminGrewe

Ай бұрын

@@MeppyMan exactly, which is why I'm curious if it ever happened somewhere in the world. I suspect it would be big viral news, but then again it might have happened 50 years ago and be largely forgotten

@MeppyMan

Ай бұрын

@@ArminGrewe given the astronomical odds of any specific number coming up, I’d say it’s probably unlikely (ironic he lol)

A recent studies showed that 25% of British Colombians are apparently planning to retire on their lottery winnings. Lotteries are a tax on people who can't do math. And since my taxes will end up supporting them, I'm a loser too.

KZread recommended this random video of such a random conversation on QI about what is really random. The rando on the left came up with some random factoids about random birds having random bird songs. They made some random jokes and finished randomly. What is random? Not this comment.

Lolly Adefope, Lee Mack and Richard Osman are looking a bit weird...

The way to win the lottery is to take the money you would spend on the lottery and stick it in a savings account instead

Spotify obviously isn't random because it runs on a computer.

If they're playing the same song three times in a row, that means they're using permutations (can repeat songs) of the list instead of combinations (can't repeat), which isn't a great way to randomize the list.

@SmashPortal

Ай бұрын

Also, anything digital is pseudo-random. Machines can only _emulate_ randomness, not produce it.

@Chocomint_Queen

Ай бұрын

​@@SmashPortal "Computers can't produce randomness" is an extremely outdated mindset. Every computer built in the last decade, and most computers produced since the turn of the millenium, has a TPM built into the motherboard, including a hardware random number generator with an analogue entropy source. True randomness is one of the foundations of modern cryptography.

@MeppyMan

Ай бұрын

@@Chocomint_Queen it’s actually not completely settled science. It’s just what we currently understand.

@brianfunt2619

Ай бұрын

I think she meant 3 songs in a row by the same artist

@dielaughing73

Ай бұрын

Well just shuffling through all the songs in the playlist without repetition wouldn't be all that random (assuming you wanted to keep playing indefinitely) since the probability of any song increases until they're all played through

BS, it never plays any songs from the end of my playlist, and i have 3000 songs on it. It plays the first 500 only

"...inn jour ear and sqratsch jou gett tha vhat x4? Thiss widdjoo doesn't haw captschians."

@dielaughing73

Ай бұрын

Something about Pacman. Didn't make much sense to me

this argument sucks. you don't want a new random song from the whole playlist every time. imagine its a deck of cards. you only need to shuffle it once. you don't put the card back and reshuffle it in, you just play the songs in the order of the one shuffle. but my theory is this isn't possible for streaming sites and apps to handle on their servers, cos its too resource-heavy or something. i have an mp3 player and even coded my own program that only has a shuffle button for mp3s on desktop, because I hate algorithms that pick songs based on similarities to what I've been listening too or only the most recent songs in a playlist, and the rubbish argument that "true randomness" is worse is so annoying

@amelialikesfrogs5778

Ай бұрын

also as a side note, youtube on desktop and the phone app have different ways of doing shuffle and they're both really annoying. on desktop, it looks at first like, after each song, a new song is chosen with the algorithm. but if you've used it enough you'll get an idea of how it works. it essentially links each song in a playlist to another random song to play after it. this means you can get into loops really easily. You WILL get into large loops of about 20 songs all the time but I've had so many times where it was 3 songs or even 2 songs playing back to back because they linked to each other. on phone, they sort of do my ideal method where you shuffle the deck, because you can see the shuffled playlist ahead of time and move songs around. except this is where the algorithm that thinks it knows how to keep you making money from ads, really shows. I keep getting the same songs when I shuffle, the point where sometimes it starts to ruin great songs for me because they're at the top of the "shuffled" list EVERY time i think they make shuffle really annoying, especially on desktop on purpose so you pay for youtube music, but it really isn't very good advertising

@EebstertheGreat

Ай бұрын

It wasn't an argument, it was an explanation, albeit a slightly confused one. The problem was that people would complain if many songs by the same artist, or in the same genre, or whatever, were all dealt in a row. Originally, Spotify used the Fisher-Yates algorithm to create a randomly shuffled playlist. In 2014, they switched to an algorithm that was designed to spread out songs from the same artist while maintaining some randomness and ultimately giving each song an equal chance to play in the long run. This was probably what everyone wanted. However, people continue to complain that the same few songs play again and again. I don't know if these complaints are true or not, but if they are, then the algorithm has changed or does not work correctly. But that doesn't negate the truth of what they were saying in this clip.

@Squant

Ай бұрын

It's all irrelevant anyway, because anybody who listens to music on shuffle is a filthy casual who doesn't really appreciate music.

@amelialikesfrogs5778

Ай бұрын

@@Squant I listen to alot of albums too. I do both

@mannmctrash

Ай бұрын

​@@Squant You sound like you'd be really fun at parties.