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Testimonials

Testimonials tagged Selection/Sampling:

Choosing Drawing Exercises

Dear Random.org,

It's interesting how many times I want to choose something at random. It's nice to have a source to do just that. I've been using your generator to choose a random drawing exercise from my drawing prompt book. Sometimes my creativity needs a little priming. Thank you for this wonderful resource.

Sincerely,

—Shawna, California, USA

New Year Raffle for Crypto Project

We used random.org for the new year raffle aiming to increase awareness for our crypto project, deepmaze.finance. We successfully integrated blockchain transactions to entrants and thanks to random.org's intuitive but traditional frontend, we delivered a very clear fairness message. Usually it takes more than a promise to convince entrants however, with random.org – blockchain integration, all stakeholders had a very pleasant experience. Thanks.

—Nick Badger

Adjudicating Arguments Between Kids

I find myself turning to the random.org android app most frequently to adjudicate arguments between my son and daughters over whose turn it is to do what and in what order.

Created a list with their three names, and whenever I hear ‘BUT IT'S MY TURN TO…’ [pick first / sit by the window in the car/ play with the toy du jour / etc.], I reach for my phone, randomize the list, and whoever's name comes on top gets preference. They've even come to me to ask me to randomize the list for them, before an argument really gets going.

—Jeffrey Harper

Gathering Review Data

We found Random.org when we were searching for a way to gather unbiased review data when publishing our articles. We use the service all the time to sample reviews and reviewers in order to gather genuine feedback about the products before we write about them on our website. Thanks for the great service!

—Gerald Schmidt, MusicAuthority

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

7th Grade Problem Assignment

Your project is wonderful; thank you for making it free and flexible for public use. I use it every day in my 7th grade classroom to assign warm-up problems to students in my class; this particular crop of kids is highly competitive and I was having trouble selecting from a group with all their hands up!

I read your FAQ and I wanted to contribute a little thought: to a computer, would it think it has free will? We store and process information in the same way; so we are running a big program which makes decisions based upon lots and lots of current states and simultaneous inputs. I suspect it is impossible to know whether we have free will from within ourselves and will have to use lots of expensive computer modeling to answer the question, but I'm guessing the answer is no.

—Dan Fruzzetti

Choosing the Right Number of Wolves

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 guaranteed 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.

—Jack Hughes

Unbiased Search for Former Classmates

I'm tracking down high school classmates so we can notify them about our 35th reunion using internet searches. A fellow classmate created a spreadsheet with the 237 ‘missing’ classmates. After working on it for about a week, I realized I was just looking for people I knew and ignoring the rest. In order to do a fairer job searching for classmates, I decided to use your random number generator. Whatever number it generates, that's the row I do next in the spreadsheet. It also actually makes the process more fun, because I never know who I'll be looking for next.

Thanks for having this on the internet!

—Laura Chabrow, New Jersey, USA

Selecting Winners for Fan Site Competitions

What can I say? Random.org is one of the most useful websites I've used in a long time. The website I run uses this service on a regular basis using it to select the winners of competitions and it's proved to be a very useful tool in doing so. Random.org is undoubtedly one of the unsung heroes of the internet. Thank you very much!

—Dan Hart, FunOrb World

Blog Giveaways

I recently ran a contest, and I quickly realized I would need an easy way to randomly pick a winner, something more random than closing my eyes and picking off of a screen.

Upon some searching, I found the Random Integer Generator. With the program's help, I was able to input the amount of entries, and simply have it pick one for me … no work involved, and no chance of the results being ‘un-shuffled.’ It worked like a charm, and I had a winner picked in less than a minute!

Needless to say, I will be using the Integer Generator for all of my future giveaway contests, as it's the single best resource I've found for this task. Thanks so much for making it freely available, and I will always link back to it (for anyone else who may be in the same situation) when I run contests!

—Matthew Watts, Uncovered Films Blog

Calling on Students Randomly

I want to thank you very much for your random number generator! We teachers are supposed to check for understanding with all of our students. I am sure you are aware of all the stumbling blocks to actually calling on students randomly. I hope that your random number generator, with its ability to generate integers within the range that I specify, will help me to better sample my students for their understanding. More important to the students is the classroom jobs like setting up the technology each day, passing out folders, etc. (I teach 6th Grade in the USA.)

The most important feature of your generator is the ability to set the range/limits!

I tried popsicle sticks in a can but found that method to be ‘uncannily’ unfair! It seemed like I kept getting the same sticks!

I tried writing numbers on index cards, but I can't shuffle cards to save my life! (Besides, when I pick the cards without looking, you know there is bias in that as well … somewhere in my brain.)

I finally purchased some dice from the net that have various numbers of sides. But that didn't work either because the number of students in my class changes throughout the year as the students in our area have a somewhat high transiency rate.

I was at a loss, and the students have been getting upset with me.

In the past I have Googled for something like this, but I guess I never quite put in the correct words to arrive at your site, but I THANK GOD THAT I FOUND YOUR SITE TODAY! And, yes, you may use this testimonial!

—Shannon Clark, Los Angeles, USA

Prize and Community Event Drawings

Thank you for this valuable service. We hold prize and community event drawings for our employees and the convenience of your site is fantastic (and fair).

—Mike McGuire, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana, USA

Random Selection of Students

I am a teacher, and part of my student's grade is based on an in-class response to questions. I noticed that on some days, I was calling on the students who usually don't have the answers, and then on other days, I called on the better students.

To solve this, I produced a truly random class list for every class meeting. Now I don't have to think about who knows what, I just read the next name in the list.

—Jerid Krulish

Revitalized Love Life

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!

—Paul Matthews

Random Drug Testing

I am a DOT Compliance Consultant in Chicago IL (USA). I have several clients who are required to conduct random drug testing. I use your web site and I really like it. I just donated $20 to your favorite charity per your request and am notifying you of same per your request.

—Mike England

Clinical Data Studies

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

Sarbanes–Oxley Compliance Audits

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

Student Team Presentation Selection

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

Woodblock Print Anniversary Contest

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

Demographic Study of a Bibliographic Database

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

NYC Stand-Up Comedy

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

Drawings for Public Safety Professionals

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

Studying Political Bias on CSPAN

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

USAID Health Surveys

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

Random Seating of Court-Martial Panels

Dr. Haahr, I have attached an article about how the U.S. Army used your website to successfully seat random court-martial panels in Germany. I credited you for establishing and maintaining Random.org at footnote 56.

Download: PDF, 150 KiB

—LTC Brad Huestis, Chief of the US Army Claims Service Europe

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

Cello Exercises

I'm a professional cellist, and I have a study book of about a thousand short technical exercises. I use your site like the sax player, Jeff, to pick a few at random to work on when I practise, so that I'm always working on a different aspect of my playing. It helps keep my music fresh.

—Jonathan Draper, UK

Random Selection of Entertainment

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.

—Marcus Stidham

Generating Names for Computer Games

I'm using your random number generator to pick first and last names for characters from a spreadsheet for a computer game called ‘A Force More Powerful’—a game designed to teach nonviolent resistance groups how to fight for democracy without using violence.

—Karen Moody-Springer, BreakAway Games, USA

Wildlife Sampling

I have used your random list generator, as well as your random integer generator, to pick cells in a grid that was over-layed a digital picture of an area in order to randomly select wildlife sampling locations. It has been a most useful program, and has saved me a lot of time in getting my wildlife inventory and monitoring program up and running. Thanks a bunch!

—Dan Dawson, Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida

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

EPA Environmental Audits

My group at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is required by law to conduct audits of randomly selected facilities. I utilize Random.org for the selection process; the format of the query page is well suited to our needs. Until I found (stumbled upon via Google) your website, the recommended procedure for ‘random selection’ was to go down the list of items selecting every nth one; actually these items are industrial or municipal facilities which store/use more than a minimum quantity of a chemical from a list of 140 chemicals selected for their toxic/flammable and dispersable properties. I found this methodology a statistical embarrassment; Random.org made it acceptable, and defensible, such as when a facility responds ‘why me?’

—Alfred J. Baginski, Chemical Accident Prevention Program, Environmental Protection Agency

Sample Selection for Government Assistance Program

Dear Mr. Haahr, I would like to express my appreciation for your random number generator. I used it for selecting a sample of 40 (of about 400) for my Work-Study project, a way to provide students on government assistance with money and work experience, at the Department of Classics, University of Toronto, Erindale Campus. My supervisors, Dr. Catherine Rubincame and Elaine Goettler would also like to express their thanks. I hope you keep up the good work.

—Ilija Milicevic, University of Toronto

Magic Card Trick Contest

Mr. Wizard is a monthly contest based on a pretty neat on-line card trick. A $50 cash prize is awarded each month to both the winner and person who referred the winner to our site. The winner is chosen by first sequentially numbering each entry as it arrives then using the web interface at Random.org to select one of the numbers.

—Fred Glendening

Selecting High Schools for Quiz Show

I produce a high school quiz show in Dayton, Ohio (USA). Each year we can only choose 36 high schools, & we typically get about 70 schools who wish to play. I assign a number to each school, then use Random.org to generate the field of teams that will compete. It's a completely fair way to choose the schools.

—Tom Housley, Producer and Director, WHIO TV, USA

Raffles for Saab Owners

I use the random number generator to pick winners in the various raffles I hold on The Saab Network web site. It's a group of Saab owners (250,000 visitors each month) that originally began on the Internet as a mailing list in 1988!

—Scott Paterson

Auditing Healthcare and Research Records

As Ethics and Compliance Officer for a University research and health care clinic, I use your random number generator to select records for review or audit. The US Office of Inspector General suggests standards for compliance programs. Compliance programs are to assure companies and institutions are complying with various regulations in healthcare, particularly with regard to submission of claims for treatment payment and the expenditure of federal funds for research. Standard of care plus various other regulatory and certification agencies also require reviews and audits of the healthcare and research (both clinical and basic science) process. Using random numbers, we select a percentage of things such as patient visits, physicians, billing records, grants, researchers, etc. for review or audit.

Thank you for this valuable service.

—Stanton Royce, Cancer Research and Treatment Center, University of New Mexico

Archeological Sampling

I am using the random sequence generator to take a 15% sample of the archaeological potsherds I am studying. More specifically, I am studying the ceramic vessels and fragments collected, over the course of eight years, from an early Spanish colonial town in Central America. The town was occupied for only a generation, so there was minimal change through time in ceramic style. For each excavation unit and level, I analyze all potsherds that include handles, rims, painted decoration, unusual clay characteristics, and the like. These are my diagnostic sherds. The remainder do not provide enough information to make analyzing and recording each one individually worthwhile, but I don't want to neglect them entirely, as in certain contexts they make up a high percentage of what we have. So, I use your random sequence generator to help me select 15% of this non-diagnostic remainder for study. Thank you for the help.

—Jeb J. Card, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University

Australian Wine Sweepstakes

Dear Mads, This is an expression of thanks for making your random number generator available. We use it to randomly draw winners in sweepstakes to promote Australian wine in Denmark! These sweepstakes will usually attract thousands of participants and we have found the generator, in addition to being extremely simple and quick to use, is a good reference if participants wish to know the method with which we draw winners.

—Thomas Andersen, Australian Trade Commission

USS Constitution July 4th Lottery

USS Constitution, known better as ‘Old Ironsides,’ is the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the entire world.

We use your program to choose winners for our July 4th lottery. We get thousands of entries from across the world each year and only choose 150 winners. Winners receive an invitation to be onboard the ship during our Turnaround Cruise in Boston Harbor.

Thank you for a great program.

—LT William Marks, Executive Officer of the USS Constitution

Running Frequent Flyer Miles Lottery

We used it to generate the winner of 105,000 frequent flyer miles in a draw for an on-line survey conducted for a major international airline. That will get someone from Europe to Asia in Economy or Business Class to the Middle East/North Africa. Someone is pretty happy now! We normally do it internally on our own computer generator but the person who does that is on compassionate leave. So thanks for the use of your Random.org. I'll make sure I credit you to our client..... Best regards from sunny Sydney

—Carolyn Childs, Managing Director, Travel Research Centre, Sydney, Australia

Running Raffles for a Literacy Support Network

Greeting Mads, I'd like to thank you for having shared your random sequencer with the world and with me today! I am part of a statewide committee that is organizing the Secondary Literacy Summit IV, California's only conference for teachers and school principals dealing with literacy issues for middle schools and high schools. Finding your random sequencer was great today, and it will come in handy to create a raffle for our 410 participants. Visiting your website, I really enjoyed reading about your Smart Couch and wish you and your team luck in finding needed uses for this very unique concept.

—Teresa Maldonado, Secondary Literacy Support Network, WestEd, Sacramento, California, USA

Grading Student Tests

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).

—David Webb, University of Mississippi

Allocating High School Positions

We are a charter high school in Chesterfield, Virginia, USA. I use Random.org to assign numbers to student applications. We always have more applicants than positions available, so the most fair way to determine who gets offered a position at our school is using Random.org to generate random sequences for a lottery. Thank you for making this process so easy for me; no one can question the fairness of your truly random numbers.

—Kelly Kennedy, Chesterfield Community High School, Virginia, USA

Running Direct Marketing Sweepstakes

Hello and thank you. You have provided an easy, unbiased and scientific format for me to pick sweepstakes winners. We are a full service direct marketing and promotions company in Chicago and often have the need to handle a sweepstake pick. We've used your site to pick sweepstakes winners of airline travel, baseball games, pool tables, and various other prizes. So for all those lucky winners—you really are randomly selected! Thanks again.

—Sarah Bender, Make It Direct, Chicago, USA

Spiritual Guidance

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.

—Viata Maya

Awarding Library Door Prizes

I am a medical librarian and yesterday I hosted an open house at the library to celebrate all the changes we have made recently. As part of our celebration (and for incentive to drop in), I offered door prizes. A friend in our tech dept helped me set up and configure an extra time clock, so that all visitors had to do to register was swipe their employee badge. After downloading this to Excel, I used your generator to generate 3 numbers to determine winners of our door prizes. Easy peasie, one two three-sie!

—Lyn Ashby

Running a Yarn Contest

I just came upon your website while trying to generate random numbers on a spreadsheet. I hadn't installed the feature and I was too lazy to look for the CD! My purpose is rather lame, I suppose, but I'm in a monthly contest to win yarn from PT Yarn, and I have to choose 15 of 31 yarn names for a lottery every month. Your number generator made it quick and simple.

—Nancy Milstone

Allocation of Tutoring Slots

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!

—Julia Moore, Director of the English as a Second Language Program, Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University

Conducting a Police Report Survey

The San Marcos Police Dept. in San Marcos, TX, USA was in need of a number generator to identify people at random through our case number systems who, over the course of a year, had filed police reports. We were conducting a survey to ascertain the level of satisfaction our ‘victims’ had with the police service we provided them. Using your generator, I was able to pull random numbers from 1 through 58,000. It worked perfectly. THANK YOU!

—Cmdr. Warren A. Zerr, San Marcos Police Dept.

Running a Free Phone Card Contest

Just wanted to send you a thank you for the random number website. Random.org was the perfect solution for us. We use your site to randomly select monthly winners for our free AT&T prepaid phone card contest.

—Kevin Waite, President, InstaPhoneCard, USA

Financial Auditing

Hello, We use Random.org to select random invoice numbers for financial auditing. We recently instituted a self-auditing program as a part of our compliance with Sarbanes–Oxley legislation. Auditing standards often require random selections, and Random.org helps us in this area by giving us a documented and supportable source of random numbers.

—Dan C. Smith, TABS Direct, USA

Drug Screening

Thank you for your work you have done on your random page. I stumbled upon it one day and use it regularly to generate numbers for random drug screens. We are a worldwide contractor who works in construction and pipe manufacturing, among other things. We are very progressive in our drug free workplace program and do randoms on a quarterly basis. I recommend this site to anyone who needs to pull numbers for any random purpose. Thanks again for the hard work.

—Gregory M. Glueck, The Shaw Group, USA

Running Retirement Home Contests

Dr. Haahr, just a quick thank-you for your Random.org website. I run a weekly contest for elderly residents of retirement homes in the US, and I have to select a prize winner from all the people who submit correct answers. So every week I assign sequential numbers to all the correct entries, and use your website to select the winner! Just thought you'd like to know your website is a valuable resource for us. Thanks again.

—Jeff Pepper, Touchtown, Inc., USA

Creative Writing

Hi! I'm writing a book and have all of my notecards numbered. I use the random generator to pick out the next two cards I'm going to ‘connect.’ It's perfect because the book is about integration and so, in theory, any two random cards should be related, even if the topics are completely different. Thanks!

—Hetty Witham

Random Sampling for Undergraduate Research

Dear Randomizers: I'm an undergraduate doing my first big research project. The whole idea seemed a little random, but I realized most of my classmates, as well as former students, lose the power of their study over having a nonrandom sample. Your generator made choosing a truly random sample, easy and intriguing. I was able to have a different set of numbers for each group without more than a few clicks. You've helped put me to the head of the class!

—Christine Whetmore, Southern Adventist University

Grading Exam Questions … Or Not

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.

—Professor Hughes Goldie, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Saskatchewan

Drug Testing of Employees

We are a medical lab located in Trinidad and we also do drug and alcohol testing. We are responsible for random selection of employees to be tested from various clients. We use Random.org for periodic random selection of employees for drug testing because it is better than Excel which most Companies use. This is a good selling point and when we explain to Companies the difference they are sold on the application!

—Jenny Narinesing, Lab Medica Services, Trinidad

Generating Sample Plots for a Vegetation Control Study

I needed to obtain several runs of true (genuine) random numbers so that I could set up a three-tier system of 60 randomly assigned sample plots for a vegetation control study. Your informative and useful site saved me some time, thanks again.

—Jason Hall, Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation, University of Florida

Drawing Free Cinema Tickets

I run a local nightlife site called Norwich Tonight. We give away free cinema tickets every month and use Random.org to choose the winners.

—Carl Warrent, Norwich Tonight, UK

Channel 4 Web Site Competitions

Channel 4 Interactive uses Random.org to generate winners of the regular competitions we run on the site. As there can be anything up to 15,000 entries, it helps to have something genuinely random, so we don't get accused of bias.

—Steve Berry, Entertainment Producer, Channel Four Television, UK

Archeological Surveying in the Northern Great Basin

I am an archaeologist, looking into settlement and subsistence patterns in the Northern Great Basin of the western United States. The project involves sampling an area (a survey universe), which has been divided into three ecozones, and then further subdivided into 200×200 meter quadrats. Each quadrat is given a number according to what ecozone it falls in. The numbers are then chosen randomly (this is where you came in) and that quadrat is surveyed for archaeology. The old-fashioned method of choosing numbers was by the toss of the dice. Your website makes it extremely easy for me to draw the amount of random numbers I need in advance, which essentially makes planning field work easier. Well thanks again!

—Cheryl Foster-Curley, US Bureau of Land Management

Giveaway of Magnetic Business Cards

I am using Random.org to choose a winner from the subscribers to my newsletter. Every month I choose a winner of 500 FREE Magnetic Business Cards.

Thank you.

—Nathan Cain, Web Magnets, USA

Calendar Prizes for Youth Ministry Program

Thank you for your website. We run a youth ministry program that has about 110 teens involved. During the month of March we decided to do a calendar, with prizes for each day, as a fundraiser. We sold 600 calendars. Instead of the traditional pulling numbers from a hat we decided to use your website to draw the daily winners. It is working out wonderfully. In a letter that we sent out with each calendar we mentioned your website and included a link. Thanks again for providing this service and may God Bless You.

—Dave Spada, Bridgewater Catholic Youth Ministry

Selecting Winners for Monthly Contests

We run monthly contests on our site and I must say Random.org has been very helpful. We use it to choose our winners and it has been fair and just fine.

—Dorette, Abusaki's Corner, USA

Anthropological Surveys

I use Random.org to generate random numbers for a random sample of informants when I conduct surveys. It really beats using the dart board or hat.

—Rod Stubina, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida

Electricity Load Shape Studies

I am using your random number generator to pull unique 6-digit odd integers between 100,000 and 999,999 as unique seed numbers for a random sample I will use to study the load shapes of our electric utility customers. We pull samples for each of our rate classifications. Thanks for making this available, and easy to use.

—Bob Smith, OG&E Electric Services, USA

Selecting Winners for Trivia and Other Contests

I am local content editor for our local on-line service. We use Random.org to select a winner for our weekly trivia contest. We give full credit to Random.org on the page. We've also used it to select winners of other contests for the web site.

—Chad Gilley, Around Town, Road Runner of Maine, USA

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