Random jottings

[mdlbear]

From amethyst_dancer by way of this post by folkmew comes the news that the classic A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates has recently been republished.

The Amazon customer reviews are well worth a read, and the "search inside" feature can provide hours of harmless amusement.

Personally, I found it a little dated. As the only work of its kind, the digits can hardly be considered random anymore, but must instead be regarded as parts of the largest well-known integer that does not have a simple closed-form expression in standard mathematical notation. (At least until ISBNs become accepted as standard mathematical notation, a prospect which purists can only contemplate with horror and disgust.)