Testimonials

I am a musician with a general fascination with randomness, computational complexity and the like. I also use the generator to produce 12-note tone rows, in which the integers 0–11 stand for the pitches C–B.

Basically I just think the whole thing is cool and I just want to show my support by checking out all the services which are available.

—Will Orzo

I make mixed media animations as a hobby, and have recently been exploring non-sequential abstract patterns, as both a visual ‘static’ effect, and as dynamic planes and surfaces for figures. While sometimes a typological approach appropriate, like taking a photo of a section of every page in the weekly newspaper and running it at high speed so it becomes non-figurative (to be used as an overcast sky), I often need more specific sorts of abstract, and drawing or otherwise generating thousands of frames of images, often for a minute or two of footage can be time consuming. So, I routinely get around this by making a fraction of that amount, and I used to pad the remaining time out by repeating frames in 'random' order, off the top of my own head, results less than impressive. Now, thanks to your random, I generate integers corresponding to existing frames, which eliminates obvious loops and repetitions, creating a much more believable and smooth non-sequential series.

Also, being subject to whimsy, I occasionally include snapshots of said numbers in the odd frame, or even the URL, considering it subliminal advertising.

—Dominic Brown

Hello,

I have been using the random sequence generator for about a year to create slot machine simulations for neuroscience experiments. Thanks so much, your site is great!

—Paul Campion, National Institutes of Health, USA

I wanted to both thank you for your random number generator and apologize for hogging the numbers today (I used up my quota and then went to my coworker's computer to get more numbers). I had to generate 50,000 random numbers for a project at work with only a couple hours' notice—we’re producing cards for a client as part of an instant win game, and each one needs a unique code—and your generator saved the day.

Plus, my coworkers already think I have mystical intellectual powers, and when I can come up with a solution like this in 15 minutes, it boggles their minds.

By the way, I love the user interface and the design of your site—it's simple and easy to use for non-mathematicians, and it has a nice clean, elegant feel to it.

Thanks again!

—Stephanie Dorenbosch, UCG Marketing

I have found the most fantastic use of your random number generator.

I use the first few lines of a 100 number sequence divided into five columns to predict future events in my life as far in the future as 6–8 months; for example, whether or not I should I should change careers (yes) or wait for a pay raise in my old job (no), whether or not I should change the engine belts in my car (no) or wait until September to do it (yes), whether or not I should ask my old girlfriend to marry me (no), whether or not I should ask the divorced lady who lives on my street to marry me (yes), if we should elope and get married in Las Vegas (yes), whether or not I should liquidate my 401(k) (yes) and invest in commodities options (accuracy = about 91%), whether or not I should refinance my house and accept fairly high refinancing fees (yes), and which religion is the correct faith (Catholicism scored the highest).

I'm looking at some really interestin numerological prophesies right now; for example, the Arizona Diamondbacks will win the pennant but lose in the World Series next October; unfortunately my mother and father are not going to leave me anything in their will when they pass on (they are going to live at least another ten years each anyway), and I am going to be reacquanited with a long lost friend in the next three weeks.

This is really great! Being able to predict the future using your random number generator has really helped me and my family make our most important decisions in life.

—David Hilton

I use Random.org to decide a sample population for individual studies. Last month when I went to generate the numbers it appeared the site was gone—but you're back! Thanks for this great free program.

—Sally B. Buttry, Quality and Safety Services, Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, Illinois

My name is Jakub and I'm writing to thank you for the random number service that you have provided. Like many on your testimonial page, I have used the service and the numbers it provides to aid me in music composition using a mathematical music composition toolkit that I have devised myself. The aim is to create music procedurally with minimal human intervention without having it sound like 50s ‘blip-blop’ modernism. So far, the results have been very promising, in large part thanks to the ease of use and the quality of your random number generators.

I have a suggestion. Is there any plan or even a possibility of implementing a choice of different distributions of the numbers? The current setup produces integers with equal probability for each [white noise] but it would be good if the users could choose between different distributions such as white, pink and Brownian. This would be great, especially in the world of music.

Other than that, thanks once again for the great service. All the best to you.

—Jakub Gaudasinski

I use your website to assign random problems to the math students I tutor. Thank you very much.

—Gabriel Lichstein, Los Angeles

Greetings,

I just wanted to send you a note to say that we are using your web site to do random sampling for Sarbanes–Oxley compliance audits. We include screen prints of your web site to document our selection universe and the random integers generated. Thanks for making it available.

—Joe Glade, Resources Global Professionals, USA

I Googled onto your site to find a random number generator for my wife's PhD dissertation. She is doing a double blind type survey of medical residents. We used your tables to feed a MS Word macro that applies a random number (300 count) to each page of an 18-page survey. 300×18 is a big Word file. Then we printed the surveys as required for each school's survey requirements.

Your site is a great source and we appreciate your effort.

—Charles Lloyd

As part of the classes I teach, I task my students with preparing a lot of presentations. To save time & reduce boredom, I occasionally have only a portion of the student teams give their presentations. I use your Sequence Generator to pick who presents (& in what order), after they're ready to present (to keep them focused & accountable). Great website; please keep up the good work!

—Lt Col Chuck Stribula, Project Management Professional and Professor, Defense Acquisition University

Mr. Haahr,

I thought I would drop you a line to say ‘thank you’ for your random.org pages.

I am currently running a contest to celebrate the 10th anniversary of my website, and need an honest way to select winners from among the entrants. This evening I will have to make the first selection of winners and your tools will provide an excellent way of doing this … thank you!

—David Bull

I used Random.org in 2004 to create a sample of bibliographic records in OCLC WorldCat for a demographic study of that bibliographic database. The results were published in my article, ‘From the Ubiquitous to the Nonexistent: A Demographic Study of OCLC WorldCat,’ Library Resources & Technical Services 50 (2): 79-90, Spring 2006.

I have since taken two samples for further studies of WorldCat.

Download: PDF, 221 KiB

—Prof. Jay H. Bernstein, Kingsborough Community College, Brooklyn, New York

I produce 4 weekly booked open mics for stand-up comics in Manhattan. A typical show is only able to put up 24 comics in the two hour length of the show, and usually over 50 comics will reply to each week's invite to perform.

How best to determine who gets on and who gets mad?

You and your site have saved my bacon repeatedly. Thank you!

—John Morrison, Morrison Motel Comedy Show, New York City

I am the founder and administrator of 911Lifeline.org.

We are a forum, support, and resource center for public safety professionals who work as telecommunicators at 9-1-1 emergency dispatch centers. We provide our services via our Yahoo group, and our web site. We recently started drawings to recognize and reward our members. In particular, we are holding our first drawing to celebrate National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.

NPSTW is an annual event that takes place during the first full week in April. It was officially created by a proclamation signed in 1994 by former U.S. president Bill Clinton. If you are interested, you can read the proclamation at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/print.php?pid=49952

Our members enter the drawings via email. At first, it was not clear how to fairly pick the winners, but then I became aware of Random.org. Each email is assigned a sequential number as it is received. Your random sequence generator is then used to randomize the entries. The first N numbers in the sequence, typically three, determine the winners.

Thank you for your fine resource, and public service.

Sincerely,

—Michael Wallach, 911Lifeline.org

I've just got several sets of random numbers & sequences off your generator to create pseudo-random ‘Three Letter Acronym’ puzzle keys in Younger Futharc runic. That old Danish script only has sixteen symbols, so lends itself to semi-cryptic ‘Hex’ applications.

Um, by the time I've finished collating the sets they'll be ‘pseudo-random,’ because there's a free key to begin, and several infuriating overlaps to complicate matters…

Thank you!

—Nik

I am high school student taking AP Statistics. I am using the random sequence generator for a major project studying if CSPAN has any political bias. Given the large size of their programming archive, I needed a way to randomly select which days and hours to research. Thank you Random.org!

—Alex Vincent

I found your random number generator really useful in my Maths Statistics coursework preparation for my GCSE so while I was using the web I found your brilliant site to help me along the way and made it easier than using a calculator! Thank you very much!

—Charlie Probert, Student, UK

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for your random sequence generator. I work for a clinic run by Peru Mission in the city of Trujillo, Peru. We used your sequence generator to do a USAID health survey in one of the poorer neighborhoods in La Esperanza. It was quick and provided exactly what we needed for carrying out the random survey. Thank you once again!

—Charles Wright