Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Quote of the Day


The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.

Plutarch, priest at the Delphic Oracle (c.45-125 AD)

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Quote of the Day



“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”

Thursday, February 7, 2013

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates


I was doing one of my random searches, I know it's been a long time! I'm sorry!
But as I was saying, Random search, this time my search reference was the word “Random” fancy that!
Then instead of doing the image search, I felt to mark the occasion I would instead, do a regular search thinking it would be something different.
Now, as I work with numbers all day the book that popped out at me was called “A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates” This intrigued me. I mean, the words; book, random and digits in the one sentence! I know, I know, I need help, or if not help, then a padded room!
But bare with me, I swear it will be worth it!
So I looked up the book on Amazon to see what they had to say and what the reviews were like, what can I say I was off on a tangent!
So here is the book and what it looks like inside:
Now, I know a lot of you will find the book in and of itself funny, But personally the funniest part of the book was the reviews on Amazon.

Here are but a few and if you want to see more just click here: Reviews

"Such a terrific reference work! But with so many terrific random digits, it's a shame they didn't sort them, to make it easier to find the one you're looking for."

"If you like this book, I highly recommend that you read it in the original binary. As with most translations, conversion from binary to decimal frequently causes a loss of information and, unfortunately, it's the most significant digits that are lost in the conversion."

And always save the best for last:

"The book is a promising reference concept, but the execution is somewhat sloppy. Whatever generator 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."