Testimonials

In several things that I do, I require some form of randomness (for example, secure primary keys for databases, with almost no chance of collision error). To do this, I use your site to create them. A simple generation of numbers between 0 and 35, and then change them into their base-36 equivalent, however long the sequence needs to be, and you have an virtually unguessable primary key sequence. You can’t guess what the next key in the sequence will be. Very useful for keeping people from being able to hack your customer list and finding out who does business with you (they might be able to guess one, but the next won’t be sequential, so they would have to start all over again to find the next). I also use it in my writing, to generate datasets for locations and people by assigning integers to various items and using the site to pick the ones that apply.

—John Anderson

I meant to email you a long time ago, but kept putting it off until the work was published. Anyway, I used Random.org data initially for my final year project in 2003/2004. It was research on sorting algorithms in the presence of caches and branch predictors. Back then the data was available for download in 10MB blocks, and there were 16 of them. So I uses all of them, 'cat'ed together, as the data to be sorted.

I extended this into a Tech Report in 2005, and a paper in 2006, which got published in the ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics (eventually, in June).

Having truly random data made me certain my results weren't due to my errors, and having so much of it made my sure it wasn't an anomaly. That was especially useful as a mere undergrad, when I wasn't really sure what I was doing.

Thanks a lot for Random.org, and for the data.

—Paul Biggar, Trinity College Dublin