There are programs that generate random numbers, but can the developers be sure that the numbers they produce are truly random?

Can programmers really know if random number generators are truly random or if they follow any patterns? I’m asking because I saw that in the Champions League (football), they used one to randomly pick opponents for each team.

Most software doesn’t actually have access to true random numbers. Instead, it uses pseudorandom number generators, which are algorithms that produce numbers that seem random but are actually based on a seed value, often the system time.

True random numbers come from specialized hardware and aren’t usually found in consumer machines. For things like cryptographic applications, additional sources of randomness, like mouse movements, might be used to add more unpredictability.

Further reading on why software can’t generate true randomness…check out …random. org

What’s atmospheric noise? And how can we be sure that ‘random. org’ or any atmospheric noise isn’t influenced by other factors?

You can check out the explanation on their website here, .random. org…randomness. Just start reading under “True Random Number Generators (TRNGs)”—they dive into it in the second paragraph.

Yeah, I checked it out on Wikipedia too. I’m curious about how accurate our predictions are for stuff like jitter…