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Re:A woman who went to the library and read every book on th... by ChuckMcM on Sunday October 15, 2017 @12:43PM (#15477902)
A high school friend of mine did a 'Pi tour' of the library where they read the 'nth' book on the shelf for each 2 digits of Pi. So book 31 on the first shelf, but 41 on the next, 59th on the next. There wasn't anything magical about using Pi for this, it merely provided the backdrop and gave some 'flavor' to the choices other than random. He had to get creative when the shelf didn't have enough volumes on it (typically he would do banker's division by 2).

The result was he found some interesting books (and some turds too). I could not argue with his logic that 20 years later none of the information I got sitting through an hour of the "Six Million Dollar Man" would be useful but something he got from one of the books might be.

Re:A woman who went to the library and read every book on th... by rgacote on Sunday October 15, 2017 @01:40PM (#15478117)
I enjoyed going to my local small library, randomly selecting an aisle, then reading everything on an entire shelf. Let me to books I likely would never have otherwise discovered.

(And am I alone in missing card catalogs? Picking a random card out of the catalog and reading the next three books in alphabetical order right after that card?)

Re:A woman who went to the library and read every book on th... by throwaway0255 on Sunday October 15, 2017 @02:50PM (#15478562)
But isn't there value in avoiding bad information and low-quality content in general?

And aren't books on-average filled with bad information and low-quality content? That ratio for the general catalog of your typical library is not very good.

I think I'd feel better about watching Six Million Dollar Man.

Re:A woman who went to the library and read every book on th... by asp_hornet on Sunday October 15, 2017 @08:21PM (#15480096)
cool idea. I tried googling "banker's division" and got nothing, what is it?
Re:A woman who went to the library and read every book on th... by bhchance on Sunday October 15, 2017 @10:07PM (#15480418)
Try "banker's rounding"