Quantum Draw · IBM Quantum
Drawings made with bits from IBM's quantum computers. An ordinary random number is computed from a seed, so whoever holds the seed already knows the result. A quantum measurement outcome is not determined by anything that existed before the measurement. Every draw produces a certificate that anyone can recheck.
Whatever you type here goes onto the certificate and becomes public. Don't put real names or contact details in. Handles or nicknames work well.
Random numbers on an ordinary computer are a sequence computed from a seed. Feed in the same seed and you get the same sequence, every time. That is useful, but it also means anyone holding the seed knew the result all along. So an ordinary drawing always comes down to whether you trust the organiser.
A quantum measurement is different. Before the measurement, there is no variable that determines the outcome. That is not "we haven't found it yet". It is Bell's theorem — a mathematical result, confirmed experimentally, and the confirmation earned Aspect, Clauser and Zeilinger the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics.
So a quantum draw can say "before this was drawn, nobody in the world knew the answer" as physics rather than as a promise. That is the gap an ordinary computer cannot close.
The drawing itself is something an ordinary computer can do. What only quantum can supply is the guarantee that it was unpredictable. This is not "quantum computers make drawings faster". Nothing here needs to be faster.
256 bits come from the hardware; everything after that is public arithmetic. Those 256 bits seed SHA-256, which is run in counter mode to produce as many numbers as needed. That expansion is not quantum — but it is published, so anyone can reproduce it. If the seed itself was unpredictable, a deterministic expansion is fine.
I run this site, which means I can see the pool of bits. That is exactly why it is built so you don't have to take my word for it: the bits used, the hash of the entry list, the seed and the formula are all on the certificate. Changing the outcome would mean changing the entry list, and the certificate shows the list.
If the pool runs dry it falls back to your device's cryptographic RNG. When that happens the certificate says so. It is never swapped in quietly.
Everything you need to rebuild the result from scratch is on the certificate.
The entry-list hash is SHA-256(JSON array). Names are trimmed of surrounding
whitespace and blank lines are dropped before hashing.
The verification code is published as-is,
so you can run it yourself and see whether you get the same answer.
Picking giveaway winners, seating, the order people present in, whose turn it is, splitting into teams, who pays. Anything where you would rather not argue about it. Paste the certificate link and you no longer have to explain that you drew it properly.
Other things here use the same hardware pool: Quantum Koan (one koan a day) and the Quantum Itinerary Solver (picks a trip by interference — which, as that page says outright, an ordinary computer does faster).