Questions Pupils Ask! 'What counts as a random number?'

摘要

When I was in the sixth form, my mathematics textbook had a table of random numbers in the back (Note 1). I used to worry about this. The other tables in the back of the book contained true things, like trigonometric identities or critical values for the t distribution. I enjoyed memorizing things like this and felt a bit ashamed if I ever had to turn to the back of the book to look up these sorts of things. But what about those random numbers? It would be silly to memorize them, wouldn't it? And yet I knew that people are very bad at inventing random numbers, so when I needed a random number (e.g. for a statistical simulation] I couldn't just put 'anything' off the top of my head, because my 'anything' wouldn't be as random as those numbers in the table. Somehow those numbers were special - so maybe they were worthy of being memorized?