Me, You, and Meme Reviews: A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates
Welcome to yet another installment of Me, You, and Meme Reviews! This time we are dusting off an old book and giving it a good once over. Or maybe a twice over. Let’s just say a random-number over, okay?
That’s right, this time we are turning our sights on Rand’s seminal tome, A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. We’ll unpack what the book is, why it’s significant, and why the heck it has garnered hundreds of tongue in cheek reviews.
But let’s set the scene a bit first, shall we?
The Year Was 1955
If a book of random numbers seems, well, random to you, let me fill you in on the state of science and technology the year this book was published.
In 1955…
The first domestic microwave oven was introduced to the United States
The Polio vaccine received FDA approval
Ulrich Steinhilper coined and popularized the term Textverarbeitung, aka Word Processing
The US Department of Defense approved Project Vanguard to launch the nation’s first satellite (it would be 3 years before this actually occurred, and the result was that Vanguard 1 was America’s second successful satellite launched)
Sure, we obviously had planes, trains, automobiles, atomic clocks and bombs, but when it came to computing, times were not so advanced.
Yet in statistics, analyses, and experimentation, having truly random numbers was critical. RAND Corporation was working in cooperation with the United States Air Force when this book of random numbers was compiled, if that tells you the seriousness of their work.
Produced at least in part with an electronic roulette wheel, the numbers were tested and tested and tested again for randomness, and then, hey, put in a book. The book was used, appreciated for years, and then computers got better at producing random numbers themselves, and the book slipped into oblivion.
Until it was reissued in 2001, a pretty hot time for internet users, and particularly for shoppers on a little site called Amazon.com.
And in 2001, a time when netizens were confused about buying milk online, the title alone was enough to make people pen a few whimsical reviews.
Like these:
These days, few legitimate reviews are going to show up, because few legitimate users exists. Even How to Avoid Huge Ships is applicable to a modern reader, but such is not the case for AMRDw100KND.
That said, it has still had a modern impact. Aside from the reviews it garners, it has also inspired a few copycat books:
Additionally, RAND’s book now happily sits in the pantheon of obscure and jokey books on Amazon, the kind made for white elephant exchanges, or gifts you think your nephew will get a kick out of:
How many of those books do you think actually involved writing? Well, the first one, I can personally say, DOES. But the rest? Probably money grabs. But hey, who can knock the hustle?
Not me. But one thing I can do is predict that the review sections of each of those features more jokes than real reviews. And I’ll question if that’s good or bad. Who’s being helped?
That’s right, I am segueing.
Because now that week one of Me, You, and Meme Reviews is done (you can listen to this analysis in RPDC 106: Show’em Where the Grit Grows), NOW it’s my turn.
It’s my turn to read and review this legendary book, providing you and the world with both a real review and a meme-ified one, because yes, there is value in a laugh. So come back soon for PART II!
