How does a computer program generate random numbers? Example: when you ask Siri to give you a random number between 1 to 10, how does it come up with that number?
In: Mathematics
It kind of doesn’t, actually.
These numbers are generated by algorithm, so they’re not truly random. To get around this, these algorithms usually take in “seed” data, which is some arbitrary piece of data to base their randomness around. This is some kind of data that’s not likely to ever be repeated–like the precise current time, or some noisy data, and CloudFlare even uses a [wall of lava lamps](https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/lava-lamp-encryption/).
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