Random number table

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Random number tables have been used in statistics for tasks such as selected random samples. This was much more effective than manually selecting the random samples (with dice, cards, etc.). Nowadays, tables of random numbers have been replaced by computational random number generators.

If carefully prepared, the filtering and testing processes remove any noticeable bias or asymmetry from the hardware-generated original numbers so that such tables provide the most "reliable" random numbers available to the casual user.

Any published (or otherwise accessible) random data table is unsuitable for cryptographic purposes since the accessibility of the numbers makes them effectively predictable, and hence their effect on a cryptosystem is also predictable. By way of contrast, genuinely random numbers that are only accessible to the intended encoder and decoder allow literally unbreakable encryption of a similar or lesser amount of meaningful data (using a simple exclusive OR operation) in a method known as the one-time pad, which has often insurmountable problems that are barriers to implementing this method correctly.