Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works

> so hopefully you can refresh a few times and get a fresh one every time

If you randomly sample from only 60 quotes, then after 10 refreshes there will be a greater than 50% chance of at least one repeat, and by 20 refreshes it's up to 95%. This is an example of the birthday paradox[1].

On the flip side, if someone wants to see all 60 quotes, they will have to refresh the page an average of 281 times, mostly (~80%) seeing quotes they've already seen before. This is an example of the coupon collector's problem[2].

The way to avoid both these problems is to shuffle the quotes into a random order, just once, and remember that order. The first time a user comes to the page, start at a random index in that shuffled list, and from then on, simply move to the next item in the list. Every user will get a unique set of random quotes, but will see no repeats until the list is exhausted, and will be guaranteed to be able to see all available content in just 60 refreshes.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coupon_collector%27s_problem

I'd be interested to know what everyone's favorite opening lines of all time are. (bonus - to see how you can quote without looking :)

For me, its: What that aprill with hir shoures soote, The drought of march hath perced to the roote, And zepherus eek with his sweete breath, inspired hath in every holt and heth, the tendre cropes, and the sonne hath in the ram, hir halve cours ironne, Than preketh hem natur in hir courages, and longon folk to gon on pilgrimages.

Somehow that has always stuck with me, I'm sure I'm missing parts, but from the first time I ever heard these lines the just imprinted themselves like a song to me.

Frustrating without a way to get to the list of works, because it's not clear when you've seen them all.

You start having to guess how many there are, based on how many you have seen and how many have repeated, and the distance between seeing ones you haven't yet seen before.

A problem made worse, the more quotes there are, as if you have N quotes, then you expect to see the one you see the most often approximately e.ln(N) times ( iirc, for large N ).

( Or put another way: given N items, you expect the gap between discovering the penultimate one and the last one to be N. )

This reminds me how much weight a great opening sentence carries. Some of them are memorable decades later because they establish the tone immediately

For reference, a famous Irish coffee-table (read: bathroom) book in a similar vein:

https://www.abebooks.com/Said-Duchess-First-Lines-Gemma-OCon...

And from a cursory few refreshes I didn't see the obvious one come up:

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Orwell, 1984

Really cool idea! Add a possibility to send you tips for other books. Here is mine: "As GREGOR SAMSA awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

It was a dark and stormy night.

What about making it a daily style game where you have to guess which book the opening is from?

It would be fun if you had to guess what book it’s from

wonderful project thanks for making it :)

After trying a lot, I only saw lines from books written originally in English.

Therefore, I assume I'll not see my favorite:

> Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.

My translation:

"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

this is nice, simple idea, but nice. I think the style of the site is also appropriate for what this is :)