Advisory: We only operate services from the RANDOM.ORG domain. Other sites that claim to be operated by us are impostors. If in doubt, contact us.

Testimonials

Testimonials tagged 2003:

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

Random Holiday Gift Exchange

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!

—Adam Menendez, Portland, Oregon

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

Retaining Anonymity among Research Participants

I am using the number generator to randomly assign research participants in an experiment. It's very important that anonymity be maintained, as the questionnaires they answer contain very personal info. I use the generator to assign numbers to each folder, then when people come in they get the next folder in the stack. I am also a lecturer in statistics at the University of New Mexico and will be using the generator to talk about probability! Thanks!

—Marianna D. LaNoue, Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chore Selection

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!

—Vicky Barrio

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

Randomness in Music

I'm an artist in New Harmony, Indiana. I've used your site to help generate a random sequece of elements for use in a ‘quasi’ random piece of music I'm completing. It's called The Utility Project, as all of the artists are playing a utilitarian role and allowing a pair of dice to make the creative decisions. I was very happy to discover Random.org.

—Doyle R. Dean

Randomizing Tiles

I used your generator to distribute 15 colored tiles in random positions among 70 white tiles for my front entrance. I knew I would be looking at this entrance for years and did not want to see a self-made ‘optimal’ pattern that I would eventually hate, so this way I can blame it all on you! Kidding. I just like color to be uniquely spread out.

—Tom Pankratz

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

Using our randomizers for something interesting? Let us know!

Contribute a Testimonial