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Testimonials

Testimonials tagged Data Generation:

Anonymous Nicknames

Me and my brother use a fixed random.org URL in order to instantly generate anonymous nicknames (20 chars, [A-Za-z0-9]) every time we log in on the game server, to hide the fact that we've each put in 1000+ hours into the game. Works like a charm!

—Andy and Bob

Database Key Generation

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

Pseudo-Character Creation

Sometimes I find myself creating long lists of characters (not completely original, but based off of a certain video game), but I'm not actually creative enough to come up with attributes for them. Random.org has proven itself useful in many things – I use the website for generating birthdays, names, etc. From there, I can then easily imagine the more complicated things such as their personality, background, and appearance; things that would be much harder to do if I didn't have that initial platform to base them on.

I've also found many other uses for this website regarding generating random numbers and letters (such as for creating passwords or just making decisions). Thank you for this service.

—Katherine L.

Learning French

To make better progress with learning spoken numbers in French—the goal is to get instant recognition plus fluidity in speech—I used Random.org to create a nice list of numbers which is long enough for me to use over and over again without fear of memory effects. I then imported them into a Google sheet, added a column of periods to help pause when spoken, then had an Android all read them out. The app, I realised later had a record function, so now I have an 6MB Ogg file of 2,000 random integers spoken in French with 1 second pauses between each!

At the root of it is your service. Thanks!

—Kiat Huang

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response Videos

Here is a video I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RURjQe0BAFQ

The video is a slow, soft-spoken reading of random numbers, courtesy of Random.org's integer generator. I was pleased to receive the following comment in response, from fellow YouTube creator ChillWhispers: “This is very relaxing. I enjoy the random order of the numbers, that way I don't ‘expect’ it to end. Your voice is very soothing.”

That was pretty much the effect I was hoping to achieve.

Thank you again for clarifying Random.org's terms and conditions for me. I was thrilled to be able to make this video.

Thanks for being awesome,

—Vex Verity

Audiophile and Other Uses

We found Random.org through audiophile channels but have found so many other uses. We've turned hedge fund managers on to some of the tools. We've sent our staff acoustician the ‘white noise’ files which he seemingly uses. On a more simplistic level, we are using the random number generator to settle small bets in the office.

—Jerry Del Colliano, Home Theater Review

Test Cases for Medical Software

Just a quick word of compliment. I Looove your site! I use your site to generate random values to use in software test cases.

I generate Date of Birth for test case subjects, but I would like more on Gender and Ethnicity generation. For Gender, I tend to get integers and translate even numbers to Female and uneven to Male.

Again, Kudos!

—Constant Van Wyk, ProCare Health, New Zealand

White Noise for Sleeping

It's common knowledge that a background of white noise tends to obscure other noise from outside the house and bedroom that can interfere with sleep.

I had never tried it, but decided to give it a go with a few dozen audio files borrowed from your site. I filled up a 700 megabyte CD with white noise, tweaked it to emphasize the lower frequencies, and had it set to repeat. The results were much more satisfactory than the next best audio background I had: a recording of ocean surf. Thank you for giving me a better day's sleep! (I work at night.)

—Reg Reid, USA

Generating Fractal Landscapes

Below are 3 fractal landscapes I created with the help of these numbers. The first 2 used Bryce 6.3 and pictures from webshots.com which are then converted into fractal islands. The rest determines trees, grass, objects, sky, sea and textures.

The last one used Vista Pro where you can use the numbers as fractal seeds and alterations to what you choose to put in the landscape.

Images: Fedaweha.jpg (51 KiB), Fifihi.jpg (65 KiB), VP cinco de mayo A.jpg (70 KiB)

—Fuller Thompson

Math Teaching

Hi, I just wanted to tell you thank you for the die roller on your site. I am a 5th grade math teacher. I developed a lesson on comparing decimals around a game, but I forgot to bring the dice to school. Your website saved my lesson! I was able to project the die roller on my Smartboard and we were able to play as a whole class. Thanks!

—Stephanie J. Thomas

Choosing Lengths for Fibre Optic Lighting

Just a quick note to say thanks for providing the service. I use a lot of things on the internet that almost do what you want, but Random.org saved me lots of time and gave me just what I wanted. I used it to generate lengths for some fibre optic lighting I'm having installed, just went through after and modified any adjacent numbers the same and it gave me exactly what I wanted. Easy to set the limits and size and shape of number results—great.

—Tim Glover

Musical Note Generation

I just wanted to say thanks for the free services rendered from Random.org. I learned a lot from the site, including how truly inferior computer generated pseudo-randomness is. After learning all about random numbers, I updated my musical note generation program to use Random.org, instead of the Rnd() function in Visual Studio. Basically, I use the program when I am stuck in songwriting to help inspire/write parts of songs, and I feel that much more confident knowing that the notes are, in fact, truly random.

—Jesse Wolfe

Safe Password Generation and Disposal

Many thanks for your interesting and useful site. The various interfaces are nice and clean, direct to the point. I recently used the list randomizer and integer generator (over the secure connection, of course) to create a truly random password. Once I had it memorized and had to dispose of the slip it was written on, I went through a fairly rigorous obfuscation process to obscure the data on the paper, then cut it up into pieces, and used your random value generators to decide which pieces were going to go into which garbage cans.

—Brian Mearns

Lottery Quick Pick

I play the Fantasy 5 which is part of the Florida lottery and I figured out that if I play 35 of the 36 numbers in 7 games without repeating that my odds of winning are 1:19518 instead of 1:376992. The only problem was that I need to play those numbers randomly in each game. Your random number generator has been helping ever since I've found it. Thank you very much!

—Cedrick Catalan

Paintings Exploring the Limits of Control and the Reach of Randomness

Thanks for your random website! I'm an artist who has been fascinated with the dynamic tensions in art and life: intellect/emotion, reason/intuition, order/chaos, planned/accidental, judgment/grace, etc. I've used your website in making my paintings. I use only red, yellow and blue, and the spattered paint lands according to your random sequences. The viewer's eye mixes the colors. Thanks!

—David Nelson

Research on Sorting Algorithms

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

Seeding Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo Simulations

I write and use molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulators which have their own pseudo-random number generators (for portability and reproducibility). These require the user to input a random number seed. If I want to perform an ensemble of N statistically independent runs (e.g., with different initial conditions), I need N independent seeds. So I use your site to generate seeds to paste into my input script, i.e., your random generator generates random seeds for input to a pseudo-random generator. Say that 5 times fast.

—Steve Plimpton, Sandia National Labs

Generating Wi-Fi Encryption Keys

I'm an IT-consultant. I use Random.org regularly to generate random keys for www.coachteam.com, a coaching company who has to make sure the data of their clients is save and privacy is guaranteed. I use your random strings to update the Wi-Fi access points WPA2-keys every few months and to encrypt/decrypt client data in our database.

As a mathematical engineering graduate (University of Leuven, Belgium), I understand the difficulty about true randomness and I would like to thank you to make my work a little bit easier!

—David Ariens, Web Innovation, Belgium

Teaching Statistics

Just wanted to say a quick thank you for your Random.org service. I was trying to demonstrate regression to the mean to my students and didn't have access to a statistical analysis program. So I jumped on the internet and had my numbers within a couple of minutes! Thanks!

—Bronwyn Clark

Running a Role-Playing Game

Hi, I'd like to thank you for making this great random generator! I discovered it a few days ago, looking for an online random integer generator for this roleplaying game I am setting up, and Random.org has more than met the requirements! I also admit, its quite fun to generate tens of thousands of binary codes, and translate them in a binary translator, to see what the ‘atmosphere’ is saying. Anyways, thanks a bunch!

—Meli Connor

Various Types of Games

I am a person who loves stats. I do a lot of bingo cards and games. I use Random.org for …

1. Bingo Game No. 1–75 for my 18,000 cards, 90 bingo variations
2. The game of Racko No. 1–60
3. Memory using the 0–9 numbers each game I use 10K numbers
4. Now with the deck of cards I can study card games more often, I play cards on paper, any game using a deck of cards
5. maybe you can do a shuffler using Uno or Skip Bo or other card games

I thank you for making the site. It saves me time. I used to do the old fashion way of making game numbers, using a bingo cage and balls.

6. I also use the lottery and Keno Numbers too…

—Daniel Snyder, Butler, Missouri, USA

Dog Races

Dr. Haahr,

I used a list of your new random numbers in your new set generator for the dog races on Friday March 14, 2008. Using your sets on the last 4 of 13 races generated 2 trifectas. The sets I use are chosen by calculating over and over until the sets generated line up with the previous winning numbers. In this particular case I used races 1 through 9 and matched them with the sets generated. Of course there is not a 100% match for all numbers. However, the way the races are set up, the 1st three finishing positions are the ones to key on.

—Frank Hopkins

Music Composition

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

Mixed Media Animations

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

Codes for Instant Win Game

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

Making Life Decisions

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

Mathematical Music Composition

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

Making Runic Puzzle Keys for a Sci-Fi Story

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

Statistics Study Tool

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

Generating Random Long-Distance Codes

I just wanted to say thanks for the site. We use 5 digit long distance codes for our Osceola County phone system. Your site has made creating a random list of codes to issue to employees a breeze.

—Joel Gomer

Choosing Countries to Study

I just wanted to learn more about the world. I use numbers from your site to randomly pick 5 countries to pay a little extra attention to for the year. I also use the random numbers to come up with an age and sex for an imaginary citizen in that country and try to think about the country's recent history from their point of view.

—Sylvia Johnson

Successful Lottery Pick

I found your RNG under ‘Google – I feel lucky’ search and used the integer generator for picking 3 sets of lottery numbers and won on one of them. What the heck, it worked! Thanks for the generator, it's fun.

—Pat Cassady, Arlington, Virginia, USA

Generating Attributes for Video Game Characters

I use Random.org to generate random attribute numbers for sports video games when creating new players. Useful for putting my friends in the game without being tempted to make them really good. Most of the time they wind up as an average to good player, and every now and then they wind up as a superstar.

—Scott Bins, Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA

Making Seeds for Password Generation

Hi, I'm using Random.org to seed the PRNG Mersenne Twister to create random passwords at goodpassword.com.

—David Jourard

Random Gift Exchange

A group of seniors at my high-school decided to hold a ‘Random Gift Exchange’ on a day that held no religious or political significance, for no reason other than it would be fun! I used the random integer generator (along with my list of gifters) to match people up with their ‘secret-santa’ partners, totally randomly! To make things even more interesting, each gift must cost an exact and random amount, and our price this time is $8.27, which was also randomly selected thanks to the random integer generator. I know our Random Gift Exchange will be a success thanks to Random.org!!

—Blair McCulley, Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

Dithering Audio Files

Thank you for your random number service, I have downloaded your 10 MB pre-generated numbers to use them for generating random noise to be added as dither to audio files in our audio products. Dithering works by adding random noise when decreasing bit-depth, such as going from 24 bit to 16 bit, allowing low volume signals that would be normally decimated to still be present, whilst the random signal increases the noise floor it normally remains inaudible.

—Mr Spoon, dbPowerAMP

Randomness in a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)

In our newest game, Starships, we have made extensive use of your random numbers. Your random numbers are used in everything from the dispersement of game targets, rewards, patterns of asteroids … well EVERYTHING that should be random. The human mind can tell when something is truly random, and when it isn't, so your numbers make everything in the game look and feel right. THANK YOU!

—Archie Angelmann, Rabid Panda Games, USA

Generating Combinations for Electronic Locks

I am an Institutional Locksmith working for a large East Coast medical facility. While Mike Bardsley CML uses the generator for random key bittings, I use it to generate random six-digit combinations for electronic combination locks. We have many of these locks throughout our facility and need to assign each a different combination. Using your generator assures that we won't use the same combination more than once.

—Charles H. Park Jr. CIL

Creating Math Questions

I am an instructor of adult literacy and used your random numbers to generate questions in BEDMAS (order of operations) for my students. This saved me a lot of extra work and time. Thank you!

—Peter Fergus-Moore, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

Making Desktop Wallpaper

I think I've found the strangest use for Random.org's services: I retrieved a 256×256 random bitmap and changed the colors, and I use it as my Windows XP desktop wallpaper. I find that it's easier on the eyes than a large, screen-sized photograph; a small, repeated pattern; or even a solid color. I think of it as shag carpeting for the desktop. The two colors I actually use are #0055AA and #002B55, which I find fit well with the Windows XP color scheme. Now, what would be cool is if I could generate random bitmaps with more than two colors.

—Gus Polly

Generating Internet Café Passwords

Firstly, thanks for Random.org. Excellent! Secondly, here's what I use Random.org for. To protect me from keyboard and mouse loggers when I'm at an Internet cafe, I use Random.org to give me a page of random numbers, from which I pick my password pieces and copy and paste them into a log in form. That way, the next time the page is served the numbers will be in a different place. Thirdly, to make this even more secure, I would love to be able to get a page of randomly organised letters (a-z) (and maybe even punctuation!) for my passwords. Thanks again!

—Peter Lovett, Australia

Jazz Improvisation

I'm yet another musician who has found Random.org very useful. Much of my music for jazz orchestra is centered around improvisation, so when I write certain passages (especially ones using twelve-tone rows), I don't want to influence the choices of notes and use your sequences tool. Also, I practice saxophone from a book with over 1300 scales & patterns to choose from. To keep things interesting, I have random.org give me 10 or 20 numbers for each day's practice. Thank you for the great site!

—Jeff Sackmann, Astoria, New York, USA

Maths Questions

I use Random.org to generate numbers for questions I am going to ask the kids at school. I'm a maths teacher and often have trouble devising questions (especially for data handling!). It's great to be able to specify what kind of numbers I want, and how many. Thanks for taking a load of work off me!

—Tanya Prestwood

Dance Choreography

I use your site, Random.org, on a regular basis for my modern dance choreography. I apply the randomly generated numbers to assigned variable constraints, such as time, space and movement order.

Please visit: www.chengdance.org, and www.dailydance.org.

With appreciation for your source of quality random numbers,

—Anita Cheng

Concert Lighting

I just wanted to drop you a quick note on how I have been using your Random.org random number generator. I program automated lighting for concerts, and very often want to select random groups of fixtures, set colors to random values, or randomize strobes. Although some control consoles have a random feature built in, I would much rather have a predictable, random set that I know is truly random, yet predictable for each show. Thanks for helping me keep my shows nice and randomly flashy!

—Chris Wessels

Lotto Numbers for Online Game

Just thought I would let you know that I use Random.org to generate Lotto numbers for my Clan (Drake Knights) on Mech Crusaders. It's perfect for a small lotto situation, great site, thanks.

—Cody Jones

I Ching

I am using your program to generate six random numbers between 6 and 9 to consult the I-Ching, the ancient Chinese book of Changes. The traditional method is to use yarrow stalks in a somewhat complicated procedure. More recently people have been using coins. It would be great if you could add a three-coin toss to your menu so that the I-Ching values could be determined. It would also be great if you could simulate the look of old Chinese coins. Just a suggestion, but thank you very much in any case.

—Michael Keating

Locksmith's Key Generation

I'm using Random.org to generate new discreet keys for each home or business rekeys, ensuring that no two customers will ever receive the same key bitting. I'm using the randomized sequence generator. For a 6 six pin lock, I enter the first two digits and let the generator pick the rest, i.e., 14XXXX.

There is a Maximum Adjacent Cut Specification (MACS) that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. For instance, with a Schlage brand lock the maximum useable difference between two adjacent cuts on a key is 7 depths. This means throwing out many numbers generated randomly, but they're very easy to spot on a printed page. I begin using first two pins of 00 and progress them to 99. Even considering the toss outs, that will provide me with more key bittings than I will ever need.

I've only just begun using this, as I've just discovered your site, but it seems to work really well.

—Mike Bardsley CML

Creating New Words

In order to avoid creating a lot of words which all sounded the same, I generated some random numbers from your site and formatted them into 6 columns. From these I used a mapping algorithm I developed to convert the numbers in each row into letters. From that I could apply the phonological rules of my constructed language, and create a wide variety of words that I would not have come up with otherwise. Bonno! (‘Thanks’)

—James Worlton

Generating Sweater Knitting Patterns

I wanted to knit a sweater and use yarn that I already had. In no single color was there enough yarn to finish the sweater. But I did have a type of yarn in equal amounts of 6 different colors, which when combined would be enough for the sweater. Blended together the colors looked great but I wanted the look to be random. Using numbers 1 through 6, your random number generator gave me a beautiful sequence for the colors. I also wanted the number of rows done in any one color to vary randomly from 1 to 3. A second list tells me how many rows to knit before changing colors.

—Barb Gates

Multi-Party Virtual Coin Toss

Hello! I am an admirer of the Random.org web site! I have implemented a Virtual Coin Toss web page that allows multiple parties in different locations to perform a virtual coin toss which they all can verify separately. On this site, a virtual coin toss (ie, a zero or one) is fetched from random.org once every minute, is stored for some number of days, and can be looked up through a simple form. So, for instance, two individuals can agree to use the toss that will occur at some particular, approaching time; they can then separately view the coin toss as it occurs or look it up later.

—Daniel Singer, Department of Computer Science, Duke University

Generating Lottery Tickets

My original reason to look for a random integer generator was to obtain some numbers for a lottery. However, independent of this specific intention, I wanted to use a ‘good and nice’ generator. Then I found yours and I like the principle on which it is based very much. Also it is very convenient because it offers many options. It was just the perfect generator for which I was looking for! I appreciate your work very much to establish this random integer generator.

—Frank Lichtenberg, University of Augsburg, Germany

Generating Tokens for Wi-Fi Access

Here at Bitbuzz, we use Random.org to generate access token for our users. They are given a paper token with four words printed on it, and we use Random.org to generate these word sequences from a list of thousands of words. Much easier to copy into a form than a password, and just as secure!

—Alex French, Bitbuzz, Ireland

Dungeons & Dragons

I'm an aspiring Dungeon Master (the guy behind the screen Toto warns you about) and I use Random.org for everything, nearly. Character stats, I simulate 6 sets of 3 six sided dice for a quick and dirty ‘customized’ character. If I need a map quickly, I use the Dungeon's Masters Guide dice tables and simulate about 100 dice rolls for dungeon layout, decoration, and monster placement. Random encounters, check. In fact I could use Random.org for all my needs, as the entire D&D game is based on the random rolls of 6, 8, 10, 20, or 100 sided dice. But where's the fun in that? I'm planning to move my computer (one of them) to my den so I can run rolls quicker than normal, but I think I'll keep my big bag o' dice at my side just to keep my players on their toes. Thanks for the great service!

—Brian Rouse

Key Generation for Wireless Network Cards

A friend of mine suggested that I use Random.org to generate 128 bit (16 byte) WEP keys for 802.11a or 802.11b wireless cards. Works great!

—Phillip Remaker, Cisco, USA

Testing Encryption Routines

I'm using the random numbers to help me create block ciphers for custom encryption routines. I do this more out of fun though a lot of my ‘research’ ends up in production systems. I've actually contributed to your third party HTTP clients. I wrote the ASP contribution. I'm particularly pleased to see the sequence generator. This is absolutely critical for my latest project—developing an ASCII friendly encryption routine for email and web use. In this sort of application, I use ASCII values with a value 32 pedestal and a 126 threshold to eliminate any special characters from being used (and likely altered) by an email or web transfer protocol. Results thus far have been great.

—Randy Tate

Archaeological Surveying in California

Your random number generator is great. I needed exactly this sort of service, to generate random numbers for a stratified, random sampling strategy for an archaeological survey, here in California, USA.

—Mike Avina, Jones & Stokes Associates, USA

Testing of Audio Equipment

I discovered Random.org due to the New York Times article on random numbers today. I've already downloaded the three pre-packaged 10 MB files and wish there were more of them (at least three more 10 MB files). I'm using them as audio—interpreted as 16-bit WAV files, they form perfect white noise, which has many uses in acoustics and audio-equipment testing, which is my field. Used in pairs, they form perfect, uncorrelated stereo white noise.

I've been able to get more use out of the first three 10 MB files by reversing their byte order (the resulting white noise sounds the same) and by using various other audio-editing tricks like concatenating the files to produce long streams). I've also used 1, 2, 3 or 4 bytes at a time to produce different audio wordlengths. Thanks to the 2's complement number system, this latter scheme is particularly effective for audio since you always get equal distributions of data points above and below zero.

Your files produce better noise than some pseudo-random schemes I've tried, since the latter can produce an audibly detectable cyclic effects in the sound quality if the sequence length is too short. The ear is an extremely good detector of such patterns. A quick-and-dirty one-time-pad scheme would involve Xor-ing your random bytes with the lower bytes of each 16-bit word on a commercial audio CD to produce the random number table. The recipient would only need your file and another copy of the audio CD. To crack it you'd have to search through every data sample on every CD ever released!

—David Ranada, Technical Editor, Sound & Vision Magazine

Advanced Musical Composition

I am in your debt for providing a service compatible with directions in advanced musical composition. I have used your service to generate systems of random digits integral to my compositional processes. It will not come as a surprise if other artists exploring extended musical forms and cross-media find your help valuable in their work.

—Michael Byron

Generating Photocopier Codes

Dear Mr. Random,

I used your random generator. I am an office specialist at a University department. It is my responsibility to enter and close out all the accounts on our department copier. The copier does not allow me to actually erase existing accounts. Since you need a 8-digit passcode to access your account and use the copier, I instead ‘close’ the account by changing the passcode on that account to something the previous user will not know.

This month I'll have to do around 200 such entries on the copier. I got sick of devising my own numbers, so I searched on the internet for a random number producer, and I found you. It was fun producing numbers. I definitely fulfilled my geek quota for the next year.

—Jason Miller, University of Minnesota

Composition for Violin, Clarinet and Piano

I am currently using your random number generator to produce lists of numbers from 0 to 11 (notes in the chromatic scale) and 0 to 6 (notes in a diatonic scale) that will later be assigned pitch names and used in a musical composition entitled, ‘Millennial Chances’ for violin, clarinet, and piano … a work commissioned by the Verdehr Trio, a trio in residence at Michigan State University. I wanted a composition whose pitch set is derived from random processes and have plans to to several more in the same vein. I've been looking for several years for a resource such as this as was pleasantly surprised to find your wonderful and useful tool.

—Harold Cowherd

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