A Million Random Digits Review / HowTo

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 normal deviates, published in 1955 by the RAND corporation. It was used for random statistical sampling in all kinds of applications.

This is episode 39 of my series about antique calculating devices.

End song inspired by "Hotter Than a Molotov" by The Coup.

[WG]

These books of random digits were an important plot point in a 1968 science fiction novel titled _His Master's Voice_ by Stanislaw Lem. A statistician sued the publisher of one after showing that the digits weren't random but actually a very long repeating sequence. The publisher had been using noise from a radio telescope, but now they discovered that one source wasn't random and must be an extraterrestrial signal.

[ro_yo_mi]

When you were flipping though this looked like a first edition. On page 168, in the second column in the top half was a 3 that is supposed to be an 8.

[gspaulsson]

Ancient calculating devices joke: An engineer is someone who, if you ask him what's 2x2, whips out his slide-rule and says 3.9

[studyhelp]

Absolutely LOVELY video once again. Clear, thoughtful, informative, well-produced -- and just the right length. I also really liked your more philosophical comments at the end. You make complex ideas really "human" -- and that's (IMO) a really great skill -- and service to your viewers. Please do carry on -- take care of yourself. I look forward to your output very much! CHEERS! Patrick.

[kylep]

I stumbled across your channel somehow a few months ago and subscribed. I realized I haven’t ever really left a comment. Just thought I’d say I watch each of your new videos as soon as I see it in my feed, and I thoroughly enjoyed your other videos too. I hope you keep making these! They are a great mix of history, math, science, and a delightfully dry sense of humor. Thanks for making videos!

[missvixen]

In 2020 a RAND Engineer analyzed the numbers in the book and found a flaw in the statistical distribution. Check out the WSJ article - it was quite interesting.

[Seb-ei]

My statistics textbooks still reference these books, especially for sampling: "Use a random number table (or generator) to produce the required quantity of random numbers"

[mandolinic]

Way back in the 1970s when I was a newly minted graduate in one of my first jobs, I spotted a colleague using a table of random numbers for some statistics work he was doing. After a short chat I wrote a BASIC program to do it for him. Saved him a lot time, and earned me some brownie points.

[paulhorn]

Well RAND co. did know to make money from a prank. Generate random numbers->publish them in a book->tell people they need a book full of random numbers-> earn the money. Thats a way to do it :-)

[andrewkarminski]

This is a great channel. Only just beginning to explore the content. Thank you for taking the time to make them.

[TheRationalPi]

Caude Shannon would love how much information is in this book.

[agranero]

Good random numbers were very hard to come by even on computers (as John von Neuman said: if you use deterministic methods to generate random numbers you are off course in state of sin) and several Monte Carlo methods, measure areas, in bootstrap methods, etc. The best book of Stanislav Lem (Solaris author) and all begins when a random number book is published, the numbers were created based on random background neutrino detection. Ten used begin to complain that they are not random and .... well it is one the best books I already read I won't spoil for you.

[Rouverius]

Published for the government during the height of the Cold War, my first guess was to foil code breaking or as passcodes. Fresh on their minds was the cautionary tale of the titan of cryptography, the Enigma Machine. The "uncrackable" cipher defeated by human error... The WW2 equivalent of setting your password to "password."

[typograf]

I vaguely remember a movie in which a computer was running malware (heavy mainframe) that transferred some data from one place to another place where they were not supposed to be. I really do not remember what - perhaps money. But at one point the heroes were inspecting a core dump. One remarked that the dump just seemed like random numbers, not a program. And then one of them remembered that the numbers were a page from this book and that proved that the memory had been written over to hide traces of the malware being present.

That is the nerdiest nerd ever to appear in a movie.

[yharna]

Wow. The spoiler warning given in this video was not even nearly sufficient. I planned on reading the entire book cover to cover but now that I know that it ends with 8 I have no reason to. Next time, please give ample warning before you ruin the enjoyment for others.

[vector]

Thank you for doing justice to this authentic product of human ingenuity. Too many ignoramuses write sarcastic reviews while never having thought about Rand's objectives.

[turdferguson]

Brilliant video love the randomness of the ururrurrr. Earned a sub in my books

[ChurchOfThought]

Thank you Chris, for your deep and inspirational homily. It's possible the universe itself is an infinitely symmetrical object, the realm of all possibilities. But the current spacetime we reside in is a restricted state, with some of those symmetries broken by either spatial expansion or temporal evolution or combinations/synergies of both.

[someone-ijgd]

Awesome! But also: Did you upload that end song in full somewhere? Really dig the cowbell from space

[baganatube]

After your review, this book has been moved to the poetry section.