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Testimonials - Miscellaneous
RANDOM.ORG is a true random number service that generates randomness via atmospheric noise. This page contains testimonials from users of the service.
Audiophile and Other Uses
From: Jerry Del Colliano from Home Theater Review
Date: 18 December 2011
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.
Test Cases for Medical Software
From: Constant Van Wyk from ProCare Health in New Zealand
Date: 12 December 2010
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 would like more on Gender and Ethnicity generation. Gender I tend to get
integers and translate even numbers to Female and uneven to Male...
Again, Kudos!
White Noise for Sleeping
From: Reg Reid from USA
Date: 3 May 2010
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.)
Satire: The Wall Street Dollar
From: Christian Marks from USA
Date: 1 May 2010
I am using your random number generator to set the value of a proposed currency called the Wall Street Dollar. This currency would be
intended for transactions among parties who seek exposure to conflicts of interest in the financial industry, such as proprietary
trading, investment rating, executive compensation and financial industry political contribution.
Pseudo-random numbers were out of the question, since they would be vulnerable to the kind of manipulation the new currency was
invented to avoid. Only the highest quality random numbers could be used.
They could also be used to introduce minute random delays into the transaction processing of the proposed exchange for Wall Street
Dollars to ensure fairness and to thwart high-frequency trading.
The web site goes into some more detail.
Your service is indispensable.
Math Teaching
From: Stephanie J. Thomas
Date: 10 December 2009
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!
Choosing the Right Number of Wolves
From: Jack Hughes
Date: 10 July 2009
I have never been a very decisive person especially when it came to the more important decisions in life. Just recently I
was
shopping an online retailer in hopes of finding a wolf shirt, and ran into a decision making dilemma. You see, I am a huge fan of
wolf
shirts for the obvious reason that they speak volumes about a person from a single glance, personality (lone wolf), social habits
(enjoys the night life), special talents (casting/bow staff handling). Said shirts, however, have a variable number of wolves
howling at the moon, and I was not about to commit the major fashion faux pas of donning the wrong number this late in my 30's. My
first thought was to graph the number of wolves vs my percieved irresistibility but that ended up with a 2 way tie between 4 and 5
wolves. Neither my mother (who has always said that I am fairly handsome) nor my WOW guild were able to provide a convincing
argument one way or the other, but I lucked out, and stumbled across your website which guarenteed me unparalleled randomness for
breaking these kinds of deadlocks. With a click the decision was made and at that point I took a deep breath of musty basement and
literally jumped for joy at the new prospects that lay ahead of me in my life rattling my cat elf-fire. To make a long story short
your site enabled me to buy the optimal wolf shirt, and my social life has blossomed ever since.
Choosing Lunch Venue
From: Doug Fessler from Ellensburg, WA in the United States
Date: 13 November 2008
Thank you for random.org. I use it for several of the reasons other people mention. My favorite use, however, is deciding where my work colleagues and I will go to lunch every Thursday. We tried voting, but we were unhappy with the results--someone would end up disappointed that their choice wasn't picked. So, now we put all of our choices into the "list randomizer" and generate a list that we visit in order. It works great!
Selection of CDs for use in Car
From: Malcolm Lashbrook
Date: 1 November 2008
Dear Sir,
Came across your web site some time ago when I was dithering over what
cd's to put in my 12 cd cassette in my car. In those days I had in
excess of 500 cd's, and could never make up my mind which ones to listen
too. I was tending to put just my favourites in week after week. I
googled 'Random Number', and your site was the result.
I have now well over 700 cd's and religously put in the cd's that the
number generator commands.
Thanks for the service.
Teaching Statistics
From: Bronwyn Clark
Date: 5 May 2008
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!
Revitalized Love Life
From: Paul Matthews
Date: 27 April 2008
My wife and I hit a lull in our sex life. The solution? We created an "Intimacy List." Basically a list of 8 intimate things we could do on any given night, running the gamut from "cuddle up" to "you know what!" Then every night we go to Random.org and pick an integer from 1 to 8. It's worked like a charm. Thanks!
Ordering Candidates for Board Election
From: Richard and Brenda Cheadle
Date: 9 April 2008
Interesting and useful website. Generated random order series for displaying candidate info for election to the board of a lifelong learning institute at George Mason University in Virginia (USA). Daughter Jessica is a Trinity alum- MBA. Looking forward to returning one day to Dublin. Thanks for the assistance!
Making Life Decisions
From: David Hilton
Date: 6 July 2007
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.
Assignments of Math Problems
From: Gabriel Lichstein from Los Angeles
Date: 17 June 2007
I use your website to assign random problems to the math students I tutor. Thank you very much.
Gabriel
Statistics Study Tool
From: Charlie Probert, Student, UK
Date: 30 January 2007
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!
Simulated Air Traffic Control Clearances
From: Trevor Brooke
Date: 29 November 2006
I am a pilot studying for my instrument rating (complicated procedures
used for flying in clouds and low visibility) and I use your random
number generator to generate simulated Air Traffic Control clearances. I
substitute the numbers in for headings and bearings. It's great practice
and I hope I'll ace the exam this way.
Choosing Countries to Study
From: Sylvia Johnson
Date: 31 October 2006
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 an sex for an
imaginary citizen in that country and try to think about the country's
recent history from their point of view.
Psychology Research
From: Meredith Blampied
Date: 7 September 2006
Hi,
I'm just writing to say a big thank you for creating your lovely sequence generator. It has helped me so much in my area of psychological research, very simply by creating a sequence for me to administer experimental tasks. But without it, my job would have been a lot more difficult.
Thank you very much.
Visual Psychophysics Studies
From: Professor Mark Dubin of the University of Colorado
Date: 30 April 2006
Donation: Concern 
I use random.org to generate a
random order for multiple stimuli used in human psychophysical testing. It's
a welcome improvement over the book of random number tables I used in my
youth, long ago.
Random Gift Exchange
From: Blair McCulley, Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
Date: 16 January 2006
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!!
Dithering Audio Files
From: Mr. Spoon from dbPowerAMP
Date: 12 December 2005
Donation: Concern
Thank you for your random number service, I have downloaded
your 10MB 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.
Random Selection of Entertainment
From: Marcus Stidham
Date: 22 November 2005
I have many movie and sound files stored on my computer, in either groups (folders) or stand alone, and I have trouble deciding which to listen to or watch. Because a random function on a media player doesn't randomly select groups of songs or movies, I decided to find an alternative. Using a random integer generator, I can arbitrarily pick them at random. I use the site daily. Thanks.
Teaching the Order of Operations
From: Peter Fergus-Moore from Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada
Date: 16 August 2005
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!
Creating Math Questions
From: Peter Fergus-Moore from Thunder Bay, Ontario Canada
Date: 16 August 2005
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!
Random Film Selection
From: Jeff Sargeant
Date: 13 August 2005
I have a backlog of 40 or so "borrowed" DVDs on my computer, none of
which I've seen before, all of which I want to see, and when I feel
like watching movie I use random.org to pick which one I'll watch
that evening. I like to use a random number because I am afraid if I
don't I'll watch all the films I am really excited about first, then
be stuck with all the one's I am not so excited about later, but with
a random selection I get a nice mix.
Maths Questions
From: Tanya Prestwood
Date: 18 November 2004
Donation: Mads's Amazon Wishlist
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!
I Ching
From: Michael Keating
Date: 25 May 2004
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.
Creating New Words
From: James Worlton
Date: 5 April 2004
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")"
Grading Student Tests
From: David Webb from the University of Mississippi
Date: 13 February 2004
When giving a quiz or test, I like to allow the
students to choose 6 out of 7 (for example) of the questions I
ask, so that they can have one "free" one if they don't know it.
Invariably, some students answer all 7. Your website makes it
so much easier to deal with this problem (and now the students
know I use your site and that I won't just let a wrong answer
stand for the one they should have omitted).
Spiritual Guidance
From: Viata Maya
Date: 17 November 2003
Thanks so much for your site. I've
been using it for several years. As a Romani (Gypsy) I have a
personal set of the Drom Romani that functions as a daily
guidance system. Working in a stressful job (Financial Aid at a
community college), I sometimes need to find some "quickie"
guidance. Your page is in my favorites and it is easy to
access. I use the first random number in your list. If it is
more than 22 (the amount of cards in the Drom) I add the numbers
together. Then I match it in my mind to the proper card. For
instance, number 14 is E Mara (the Sea) and it tells me to go
with the flow, be relaxed, retain a sense of humor! Hope this
doesn't sound frivolous to you because it isn't to me. It aids
my spiritual development on a daily basis.
Random Holiday Gift Exchance
From: Adam Menendez from Portland, Oregon, USA
Date: 28 October 2003
Hooray for the Rogan Family! My sister Katherine married
into this lovely family, and now I get to administer their
holiday gift exchange! I use random.org to ensure that the
drawing of names is above reproach! A random holiday is a happy
holiday!
Multi-Party Virtual Coin Toss
From: Daniel Singer from the Department of Computer Science at Duke University in North Carolina, USA
Date: 2 October 2003
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.
Allocation of Tutoring Slots
From: Julia Moore, Director of the English as a Second Language Program at the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University, USA
Date: 25 September 2003
I used
your sequence generator to run a lottery for English as Second
Language Services at Northwestern University (Chicago
Campus). Each year we have more students applying for tutoring
slots than there are spaces available, so this year we ran a
lottery to determine who would receive a slot. Thanks for
making this process easier!
Chore Selection
From: Vicky Barrio
Date: 26 April 2003
Donation: Concern
I stoppped on your web site
to look for a random number to help me decide which chores to do
first. That led me to your personal webpage. I admire your
work and generosity very much!
Grading Exam Questions... Or Not
From: Hughes Goldie, Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Date: 26 February 2003
I use your random numbers to assign grades
for students' exams answers. It is quicker than reading them
all... No I don't really... just kidding! Actually I use your
random numbers to decide which lectures to base the exam
questions on, since there is not enough time in the exam to ask
an essay question on every lecture.
Video Image Randomisation
From: Ed Williams, Senior Engineer with the Public Broadcasting Service, USA
Date: 20 November 2002
I just found your website and am using it to
randomize a group of numbers that define a group of video images
to be used in subjective tests to determine the amount of
compression through different transmission paths and through
multiple compression stages for storage and processing. Thanks
very much for this unique and useful service.
Testing of Audio Equipment
From: David Ranada, Technical Editor of Sound & Vision Magazine in New York City
Date: 12 June 2001
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 3
10MB 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!