Testimonials

I study the life-cycle of viruses, and I perform lots of tissue culture experiments. In order to try to develop theories to explain some results I was getting, I wrote a computer program that uses a Monte Carlo scheme to simulate infection of cells by viruses. I need a different random number for each simulated virus, in order to randomly assign it to a cell that it ‘infects.’ In order for the results to be meaningful, I need to simulate tens of thousands of ‘cells’ and hundreds of thousands of ‘viruses,’ so I need hundreds of thousands of random numbers. The pseudo-random numbers produced by the Apple Macintosh built-in linear congruental generator proved themselves to be not good enough for the job, as I found that some numbers were chosen too often, a definite no-no for my purposes. Then I saw the NY Times article about this site and gave it a try. First I tried using Random.org numbers to seed the Macintosh generator at frequent intervals during the execution of the simulation, but it did not solve the problem. So I tested using all numbers from this site and they passed my quality test. So now I download several batches at a time of 10,000 numbers between 1 and 40,000 and string them into big files as the sources of my numbers. I'd like to be able to download them in even bigger batches, though. Thanks for a truly useful service!

—David N. Levy, University of Alabama at Birmingham

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