Random numbers web service

Generating numbers that are truly random is quite difficult. Every random number needs to be based on some starting place — the time of day in milliseconds, perhaps. As such it’s actually a predictable number; it’s deterministic, even if a regular human won’t realistically guess it.

For most of what we do, we create a pseudo-random number — one that is random enough for our purposes. Yet I’ve experienced situations where the “pseudo” part becomes very apparent.

For example, when generating test data, I will have a loop which quickly picks x number of records out of a hat. The problem is, that little bit of code will execute within a millisecond — so I find that I often pick out records that are quite close to one another. You think you’ve shuffled the cards, and yet you draw the 2, 3 and 4 of clubs right off the bat.

It’s a hard problem. The challenge is finding a function that varies unpredictably each time you ask for a random number.

Today I came across a web service that offers such a thing — random.org. They use all sorts of crazy techniques to ensure variability.

If we want, say, 10 numbers in the range from 1 to 6, we use:

Hitting this from C# would be pretty trivial with WebClient or some such. Neat!

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PS, inspired by this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1234094/how-can-i-generate-truly-not-pseudo-random-numbers-with-c