book: The Rand Corporation 1 Jan 1955

A Million Random Digits

With 100,000 Normal Deviates

a 1955 random number book by the RAND Corporation. The book, consisting primarily of a random number table, was an important 20th century work in the field of statistics and random numbers. It was produced starting in 1947 by an electronic simulation of a roulette wheel attached to a computer, the results of which were then carefully filtered and tested before being used to generate the table. The RAND table was an important breakthrough in delivering random numbers, because such a large and carefully prepared table had never before been available. In addition to being available in book form, one could also order the digits on a series of punched cards. The main use of the tables was in statistics and the experimental design of scientific experiments, especially those that used the Monte Carlo method; in cryptography, they have also been used as nothing up my sleeve numbers, for example in the design of the Khafre cipher. The book was one of the last of a series of random number tables produced from the mid-1920s through the 1950s, after which the development of high-speed computers allowed faster operation through the generation of pseudorandom numbers rather than reading them from tables. (from wikipedia)

Enlarge

Random pages (136–137) from A Million Random Digits by the Rand Corporation - found this picture as part of a book review on Tom Jennings' World Power Service. Thanks Tom!

iI have the 2001 edition