Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates/archive1

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates
A very important book in the history of computing and statistics based on Monte Carlo methods. The article is well written and has a high quality picture which gives a sense of what the article is about. Klonimus 03:01, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Object. Too short:
 * I see where the "million random digits" comes from, but what about the "100,000 normal deviates"?
 * 100,000 numbers distrubuted under a normal distribution
 * How high-quality are the random numbers? What tests were used to determine randomness?
 * More detail is needed on the generating system: what did the electronic simulation of the roulette wheel consist of, what computer was used, and what was the computer's part in the whole thing?
 * It collected data from the roulette wheel
 * What, did they have a guy spinning a roulette wheel a million times and manually writting down each number as it came up? Or was there a contraption that detected which slot the ball landed in, and there was a non-human spinning it a million times?  If so, how could they ensure that the robotic precision of, well, a robot, wouldn't interfere with the randomness of the numbers?  Are there pictures of this wheel anywhere? Fieari 06:06, September 12, 2005 (UTC)
 * The article says that the book was the largest table of random numbers ever produced. What was the typical table size for earlier books?
 * 10,000 digits or less, the largest table up to that time period was 100,000 digits
 * How much did the book cost to produce?
 * How much did the book cost to buy?
 * How many copies were sold?
 * Who was the typical buyer?
 * Researches, and sleepless people.
 * Which machines were the punch cards for? Was it the standard IBM card, or another format?  Or multiple formats?
 * IBM punch format, other machines could read it or required a simple conversions routine,
 * Do we have an article on books of random numbers as a whole? If we do, this needs to link there.  If we don't, one is needed.
 * Alot of this is described in the article on random numbers. Klonimus 05:59, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
 * --Carnildo 04:06, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Object: too short (Carnildo objecting for that same reason, that's a new one). A good start, but you're gonna need to stretch it out to at least about three times this length to meet a bare minimum of what people will be willing to consider featured quality. This is only two paragraphs so far. Everyking 04:37, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The article is too short and is missing a lot of information. Much of the information can be obtained from the introduction of the book (linked to from the page), the rest can be obtained from the "Short history" reference I put on there. I'm happy to add to it and turn it into a good article, but I haven't done it yet. Of Carnildo's questions, the only ones which simply cannot be answered in general are how much it cost to produce, how many copies were sold, and who was the typical buyer (the data for that information just isn't out there, I happen to know). The rest are very easy to answer and would be required for a featured article.--Fastfission 05:45, 11 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Sevenpenny seizure. The book of tables was an important 20th century work in the field of statistics and random numbers. The article needs to explain, in greater depth, why it was an important 20th century work in the field of statistics and random etc. Which important projects would otherwise have been impossible without it? Which machines, which computers, which devices were built with this book? How important was it, really? The impression I get from reading the Tom Jennings link - and who is Tom Jennings? - is that it is a little curiosity, and amusing thing to have on one's coffee table but hardly even notable as an individual Wikipedia entry, let alone a featured article. If it is to remain, could we have an ISBN and author details (presumably "The RAND Corporation", but was there a foreword). Did you know that it's still on sale? Well, you know now. The top review in the non-featured section is priceless; the reviewer drolly complains about the non-random nature of the numbers printed in the outer lower margins of the page. How were the digits determined? The article skims over that bit. "an electronic simulation of a roulette wheel attached to a computer" confuses me; "attached" in particular. -Ashley Pomeroy 23:34, 13 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Comment. Mathematics can come across as quite dull and difficult to understand for a lot of readers, and this article isn't hardly going to spark any major popular interest, no matter how important the book is. If you really want people to get interested in math, improve any number of higher-lever articles like logarithm, statistics and equation. Or why not take on a real challange, like mathematics? / Peter Isotalo 18:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Object. The word table is used a lot but it is never explained what exactly it means in this context. Is it a Table (database), Table (information), Mathematical table, or something else? There is also no precise definition within the first few sentences that addresses what this book is about—the reader shouldn't have to guess based on the book's title alone. It should say something like "blah blah is a book that lists tables of random numbers generated from blah blah..." Random numbers is also linked to twice within the article. &mdash;jiy (talk) 22:46, 16 September 2005 (UTC)