Thursday, December 10, 2009

Lists, lists, lists...

It may seem as though I've been posting lists for weeks. That is true but not for so many weeks as I have been thinking about them. This is not a lament, at least on my part, and being the not-particularly-organized person that I am lists have a dual function: they are simple in presenting the information that they contain but also serve as a safe anchorage for a wandering mind with an appetite for trivia.
I think that the only list already mentioned here that I have not yet posted concerning 'Music in 2009' is that of singles: it was always going to be a bit of a random, almost fatuous, list and I'm well through working on it.
The latest started as a 'private list', although it largely stemmed from earlier comments and considerations. I started to wonder about all the albums and artists I should have bought or heard live in 2009 but had failed to do. The next thought was that music in 2009 does not stand in isolation, either from 2008 or, as occurred to me this week, what might happen in 2010. Take this approach too far and the list will be of Fibonaccic proportions but comfortingly, perhaps if only statistically, not infinite.

Not that this is a new idea because Fibonacci was a 13th century mathematician from Pisa, Italy. It is an exponential-logarithmic scale in which the numbers increase very rapidly at first but then the rate of increase slows and tends towards a maximum value. It is hard to define but empirically it has obvious natural application: rabbits do not increase in number exponentially, at least not for ever, even in Australia!

Statistics are a great talking point, and make good headlines, but then there is that truism: 'There are lies, damn lies and statistics.'
We are all an unwitting part of these things so we had better get used to it. I might just share some of my list of 'albums I wish I had' in the coming fortnight if only so you can tell me where I went wrong.

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