Assume: average song length of 3 minutes; 3000 songs; the song selector is truly random.
What is the expected number of songs which will have been played ten or more times over the course of a week?
What is the expected number of songs that won't have been played at all in a week?
These are calculable numbers.
A quick-and-dirty handwaving kluge would be to figure that there are 7*24*60/3 = 3360 timeslots to fill with 3000 songs, so that the expected number of times a single song was played is 1.12, and plug it into the Poisson distribution.
Results left as an exercise to the student, who might turn out to be surprised.
Expected number of songs never played: 978.84 Expected number of songs played once: 1096.3 Played twice: 613.93 Played thrice: 229.2 Four times: 64.18 Five times: 14.38 Six times: 2.68 Seven times: 0.43 Eight times: 0.06 Nine times: 0.01 Ten times : 0.00
We'd expect to hear between either two or three songs played six times over the course of the week. There is a 43% chance that there is one song played (on average) every day.
no subject
Date: 17 Sep 2004 02:32 pm (UTC)What is the expected number of songs which will have been played ten or more times over the course of a week?
What is the expected number of songs that won't have been played at all in a week?
These are calculable numbers.
A quick-and-dirty handwaving kluge would be to figure that there are 7*24*60/3 = 3360 timeslots to fill with 3000 songs, so that the expected number of times a single song was played is 1.12, and plug it into the Poisson distribution.
Results left as an exercise to the student, who might turn out to be surprised.
I just did the math
Date: 17 Sep 2004 03:13 pm (UTC)Expected number of songs never played: 978.84
Expected number of songs played once: 1096.3
Played twice: 613.93
Played thrice: 229.2
Four times: 64.18
Five times: 14.38
Six times: 2.68
Seven times: 0.43
Eight times: 0.06
Nine times: 0.01
Ten times : 0.00
We'd expect to hear between either two or three songs played six times over the course of the week. There is a 43% chance that there is one song played (on average) every day.
This has been an obsessive-compulsive moment.
Re: I just did the math
Date: 20 Sep 2004 05:33 pm (UTC)(I would have said so sooner, but there's no net access on the Mendocino County coast.)