Tag Archives: shuffle

Fargo Man Discovers iPod’s Song Shuffle Algorithm

Random...?

Random? Damn near killed him.

Fargo, ND—iPod owners will be quick to tell you that they love using the device’s “shuffle” feature to play a random assortment of music. It liberates the user from the responsibility of having to pick which songs they want to hear. This may seem random to you or me, but according to one area math wiz, it’s not.

Local Mathologist Dr. Bictor Tedhanger believes there’s something very specific about his iPod’s “shuffle” sequence. “Fact: What may seem like a completely random selection of songs is anything but. Fact. The sequence was quite easily solved, actually. Fact.” 

Bictor Tedhanger

Bictor Tedhanger

Tedhanger believes that Apple, in conjunction with the NSA and the CIA, is using your personal data to shuffle your song playback. “Fact: Computate the number of songs on your iPod. Multiply it by one million. Fact. Divide that total by the sum of the house number of the residence in which you currently live and the sum of the numbers in your date of birth. The resulting number rounded up to the nearest whole number divided by 3 is the number of spots in descending order in which the iPod skips songs. Fact.”

Representatives at Apple could not be reached to confirm or disconfirm these allegations. Is Tedhanger onto something or is he on something? What do you think? Does his math add up when shuffling on your iPod? Let us know in the comments section below!