Random Numbers in Banks & iPods

It is sometimes interesting to see how much thought has gone into a seemingly simple feature in an everyday device - like the ability to shuffle songs on a CD or MP3 player.

The Numbers Guy - WSJ.com:
"Earlier this week, Mads Haahr ordered a customized iPod with 'God Plays Dice' engraved on its back. Mr. Haahr -- a random-number enthusiast, lecturer in computer science at Trinity College in Dublin and keeper of the Web site Random.org, a popular source of random numbers -- intends to answer a question that has long bedeviled users of Apple's popular music player: Does the shuffle function really play users' songs in random order?

Since Apple Computer Inc. added the shuffle function to the main menu of iPods two years ago, the question has been raised by the New York Times and Newsweek; debated on Slashdot and other Web sites; and inspired a regular feature in the Onion.

... strategies, which must detect and analyze natural processes, serve up numbers too slowly for high-volume consumers of randomness. Banks, casinos and others generally must rely on computer algorithms, meaning they're on the hunt for programs that can best mimic true randomness"

We hope that banks need random numbers for their encryption algorithms and not to compute balances ...