Can you shuffle an album in the numerical order it appears on in the original track listing? Like, let’s say the album has 14 songs, statistically, if you shuffle enough times then the order of the songs would appear in the track list order, no?

Question

Can you shuffle an album in the numerical order it appears on in the original track listing? Like, let’s say the album has 14 songs, statistically, if you shuffle enough times then the order of the songs would appear in the track list order, no?

In: 3

Answer 1

Well, yes and no. For an album with 14 songs, if you reshuffled once per second, without stopping to sleep or for any other reason, it would take on average about 1400 years before you got the lucky hit. (14! seconds is about 2700 years.) Thus, unless you are very lucky, it won’t happen for you. If everyone on Earth started doing it, the first hit would happen pretty quickly.

For an album with only 10 songs, you’d average a hit in 21 days. (10! seconds is about 42 days.) Even taking breaks for sleep and food, that’s unpleasant, but do-able.