First Run
We each picked our own songs without telling the others which songs those were. We generated a random number between 3 and 20 to determine the time interval. In this trial, we ended up with 17 second intervals. We then started our songs, and generated a random number between 0 and 1 to determine whether we press mute (either to mute or unmute depending on previous state) or do nothing. There was a lot of indeterminacy for each person because we had no idea what the other people chose. There was a fair amount of entropy because these songs weren’t in any way designed to be played together, and were from very different genres.
Second Run
We chose the 4th song in our recommendation list on YouTube as our song. We generated a random number between 3 and 20 to determine the time interval. In this trial, we ended up with 3 second intervals. We then started our songs, and generated a random number between 0 and 1 to determine whether we press mute (either to mute or unmute depending on previous state) or do nothing. This increased the indeterminacy, because now each person not only does not know the other peoples’ song choices but also may not be familiar with their own. It is less than if we had chosen a random song, though, because it was chosen from a list of songs that are related to our previous choices. The entropy in this trial was very high, mostly because of the time interval. We had a hard time generating a new number and acting appropriately while watching the clock in 3 second intervals. We often are acting on our own time in this recording, generating numbers and guessing at when 3 seconds had gone by. Also, with such a short time interval, there were almost never full musical phrases played out so each song on its own was chopped up while being mixed with the other sounds.
Third Run
We each contributed a song and assigned it a number, 1-3. Then we each generated a random number in order to select which of the three songs each of us would use. Two group members selected the first song and one group member selected the second song. We generated a random number between 3 and 20 to determine the time interval. In this trial, we ended up with 15 second intervals. We then started our songs, and generated a random number between 0 and 1 to determine whether we press mute (either to mute or unmute depending on previous state) or do nothing. Both the indeterminacy and the entropy were lower in this trial. We all knew what the song choices were beforehand, and the number of choices was small. This brings the indeterminacy down. The fact that we ended up with 2 people playing the same song broguht down the entropy because there were fewer songs, and also the repeated song was played more continuously because there was a higher chance in any given interval that it would be played. We also had a somewhat long time interval, meaning larger chunks were played and often phrases were allowed to be finished before changing state, also lowering the entropy.