What does the integer while setting the seed mean?

Question

I want to randomly select n rows from my data set using the sample() function in R. I was getting different outputs each time and hence used

Answer 1

In the old days, there were books that contained pages and pages of random digits (in a random order, of course).

I like to think of set.seed(x) as telling the computer to start reading random numbers from page x in a huge book of random numbers. x has nothing to do with the data, but how the algorithm for choosing random numbers should begin.

This might be a bit facile, but I like the analogy.