History Literature / AMillionRandomDigitsWithOneHundredThousandNormalDeviates

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a_million_random_digits_with_100000_normal_deviates.jpg]]
->''"I can't really put my finger on it, but by about the halfway mark, I started to lose interest. Best I can come up with, is that the storyline, the plot, lacked cohesiveness. The narrative was a tad bit... random in spots. And maybe a bit over-long."''
--> -- '''Patrick Murray''', "[[https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates/dp/0833030477 story lacked cohesiveness, but I've read worse.]]"

''A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates'' is a book with 400 pages of 2500 random digits each followed by 200 pages of 500 deviates each.

Outside of a cover and a foreword, that is it. The book was first published in 1955 to be used whenever someone needed to pull out a random number. Despite a re-issue in 2001, the book has been rendered largely obsolete by computers that can run random number generators. Still, computers did allow people to order it from the Internet and even give it reviews, leading to a variety of sarcastically mathematical reviews on [[https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates/dp/0833030477 Amazon]]. The reviews were interesting enough to warrant a mention in two different ''New York Times'' articles, "[[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/magazine/17FOB-Medium-t.html The Reviewing Stand]]."

All that aside, how in the world does a list of random numbers demonstrate {{Trope}}s? If Tropes are "storytelling shorthand," how can they be demonstrated by something that is only a story by the most absurdly wide of definitions? The answer to that comes from the fact that even if something is a tale only by the widest of definitions, even that almost-tale falls under a law of Tropes: there is no such thing as JustForFun/TheTropelessTale. Need proof?
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!!''A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates'' provides examples of:

* AnachronicOrder: The book doesn't follow any type of set structures, it just randomly switches focus from character to characters over and over. Did we mention it switches between ten different characters?
* AnthropicPrinciple: Really, what are the odds of these one million digits appearing in this order on these pages? The whole thing is highly improbable, but hey, it needed to happen, or else the book couldn't exist to be improbably in the first place.
* AvertedTrope: This lacks nearly everything, even the OmnipresentTropes. TheProtagonist, TheClimax, ArsonMurderAndJaywalking, you name it and odds are it isn't in here. I mean, it has some tropes, but just enough to avert being JustForFun/TheTropelessTale.
* BeigeProse: An odd combination of this trope and WallOfText; while the book has a lot of text, it does so without using any superfluous adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, verbs, nouns, or, well, words. It just cuts straight to the numbers with nothing flowery window-dressing.
* DeadHorseTrope: "Random number books" like this have been made completely obsolete by random number generators accessible on consumer-friendly computers.
* {{Doorstopper}}: The digits alone make the book 600 pages, but with the wordy foreword, this book is far larger and heavier than its contents can justify.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The title of the book is as instructional as can be: the book's contents include a million random digits and 100,000 normal deviates.
* InMediasRes: The first number to appear in the book is the second digit in sequence, "1," but immediately after 1, the book switches back to the first part of the sequence, the digit "0."
* LongTitle: There's nothing pithy about the eighteen-syllable long title, which is more of a sentence than a proper name for something.
* MindScrew: The title juxtaposes "Normal" and "Deviates," two terms that don't make a heck of a lot of sense together. How can something that is able to be plotted and ordered also be wholly random? This dichotomy was so strong that the book was put in the New York Public Library's Psychology section, according to [[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/12/science/connoisseurs-of-chaos-offer-a-valuable-product-randomness.html this]] ''New York Times'' article.
* NoPlotNoProblem: There isn't a story to follow, the readers are just expected to use the random numbers presented to them however they see fit.
* NoPunctuationPeriod: Channeling James Joyce's ''Literature/{{Ulysses}}'', the Rand Society made a book in a single sentence, without any commas, periods, or even spaces between characters. The whole book is one long string of a single word or number.
* RandomNumberGod: Even three numbers into the book, zero has already been repeated twice. Wow, I'm sure it was totally random that this book gave out the lowest number possible when I needed a nine...
* TropeMaker: Rand's book was the first in a genre called "random number books," which were massive books filled with numbers randomly generated by computers.
* WallOfText: Each page is made up of giant columns listing either 2500 random digits or 500 normal deviates.
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* WallOfText: Each page is made up of giant columns listing either 2500 random digits or 500 normal deviates.

Outside of a cover and a foreword, that is it. The book was first published in 1955 to be used whenever someone needed to pull out a random number. Despite a re-issue in 2001, the book has been rendered largely obsolete by computers that can run random number generators. Still, computers did allow people to order it from the Internet and even give it reviews, leading to a variety of mathematically sarcastically mathematical reviews on [[https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates/dp/0833030477 Amazon]]. The reviews were interesting enough to warrant a mention in two different ''New York Times'' articles, "[[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/magazine/17FOB-Medium-t.html The Reviewing Stand]]."

-->--'''Patrick Murray''', "[[https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates/dp/0833030477 story lacked cohesiveness, but I've read worse.]]"

All that aside, how in the world does a list of random numbers demonstrate {{Trope}}s? If Tropes are "storytelling shorthand," how can they be demonstrated by something that is only a story by the most absurdly wide of definitions? The answer to that comes from the fact that even if something is a tale only by the widest of definitions, even that almost-tale falls under a law of Tropes: there is no such thing as [[JustForFun.TheTropelessTale The Tropeless Tale]]. Need proof?

* AvertedTrope: This lacks nearly everything, even the OmnipresentTropes. TheProtagonist, TheClimax, ArsonMurderAndJaywalking, you name it and odds are it isn't in here. I mean, it has some tropes, but just enough to avert being TheTropelessTale.

* OrderVersusChaos: The title juxtaposes "Normal" and "Deviates," two terms that don't make a heck of a lot of sense together. How can something that is able to be plotted and ordered also be wholly random? This dichotomy was so strong that the book was put in the New York Public Library's Psychology section, according to [[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/12/science/connoisseurs-of-chaos-offer-a-valuable-product-randomness.html this]] ''New York Times'' article.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The title of the book is as instructional as can be: the books contents include a million random digits and 100,000 normal deviates.

* BeigeProse: An odd combination of WallOfText; while the book has a lot of text, it does so without using any superfluous adhectives, adverbs, or any words at all.

* AnthropicPrinciple: Really, what are the odds of these one million digits appearing this order on these pages? The whole thing is highly improbable, but hey, if it didn't, then we wouldn't have ''A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates''.

''A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates'' is a book with 400 pages of 2500 random digits each and 300 pages of 500 deviates each.

* RandomNumberGod: Even three numbers into the book, zero has already been repeated twice. Wow, I'm sure it was totally random that this book gave out the lowest number possible when I needed a nine...

->''"I'm not sure why exactly, I can't really put my finger on it, but by about the halfway mark, I started to lose interest. Best I can come up with, is that the storyline, the plot, lacked cohesiveness. The narrative was a tad bit... random in spots. And maybe a bit over-long."''

* NoPlotNoProblem: There isn't a story to follow, the readers are just expected to use the random numbers presented to them however they see fit.

* AnthropicPrinciple: Really, what are the odds of these one million digits appearing this order on these pages? The whole thing is highly improbable, but hey, if it didn't, then we wouldn't have ''A Million Random Digits With 100,000 NormalDeviates''.

* AvertedTrope: This lacks nearly everything. TheProtagonist, TheClimax, ArsonMurderAndJaywalking, you name it and odds are it isn't in here. I mean, it has some tropes, but just enough to avert being TheTropelessTale.