October 02, 2006

Wait. Didn't we discuss this at lunch a while back. Where Natedogg and I had to work to convince you that you could rate food on Amazon...

Looks like Noam Chomsky has been retroencabulated.  

Enjoy A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. Bruce Schneier's review:

The meat of the book is the "Table of Random Digits." It lists them in five-digit groups -- "10097 32533 76520 13586 ..." -- 50 on a line and 50 lines on a page. The table goes on for 400 pages and, except for a particularly racy section on page 283 which reads "69696," makes for a boring read.

Amazon user B. MCGROARTY's review:

The book is a promising reference concept, but the execution is somewhat sloppy. Whatever algorithm they used was not fully tested. The bulk of each page seems random enough. However at the lower left and lower right of alternate pages, the number is found to increment directly.

Many more rave reviews on amazon. 

Nice of Amazon to let you search inside the book -- you really get a flavor for the author's style... One may also download directly from RAND both the download the data files and the original introduction [PDF], the latter of which is fascinating from several standpoints (no, really). For example, the authors illustrate the (somewhat dry) randomness-testing details by taking the numbers to be sets of poker hands and tallying how many busts, pairs, ..., full house, fours and fives occurred.  

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