Hi Math student. Happy you googled this way on your quest for a topic to write your statistics paper on.

Here is the problem, its a real life problem, one that hurts about 10 million owners of an iPod.

Random is not perceived to be random.

Many of us consumadrin loaded individuals bought an iPod to enjoy a different song every day. But my iPod has a preference for Johny Cash and Dennis Leary. In a Newsweek artcicle Steven Levy wrote that his iPod favoured Steely Dan. He also tried to do a little research on the randomness of the iPod and actually interviewed Temple University prof John Allen Paulos who claimed:

"It’s entirely possible that nothing at all is amiss with the shufflefunction. It’s quite common for random processes (like coin tosses) toget unlikely results here and there, like runs of six heads in a row.Over a very long time, it evens out, but it’s hard for us to envisionthat. "We often interpret and impose patterns on random processes,"

I do not buy that.

I want statistical evidence that the birthday paradox is at work here… I want evidence that I can or can not use my iPod as a casino device. I promise access to my iPod backup to the first student who provides me the paper that proves that the iPod is not random…

And now I’ll delete Leary and Cash. I’m sick of them.