If one day we finally prove the normality of $\pi $, would we be able to say that we have ourselves a sure-fire truly random number generator?
2026-03-26 16:05:44.1774541144
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If $\pi $ is normal, can it be used as a random number generator?
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Tomorrow's lottery numbers are random. Yesterday's are not. Pi is like the latter.
If you're not convinced, we can take a bet on yesterday's numbers. :-)
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The definition of random is unpredictable. $\pi$'s digits have been calculated to billions of digits and they are all public information. You might be able to use a random range of the digits, but then you would need a separate method to select that range.
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A wonderful paper by Jacques Dutka I chanced to see in the 1970's put a million digit pi expansion through a rigorous set of tests for uniformity and unpredictability and showed it was significantly better that the best RNG at the time. Its utility was not limited by the "fact" that since it was entirely known to a million digits, and was an ontic fact (the certain relationship between a radius and circumference) it could not ITSELF be random.
Not random. Never random. Evenly distributed, and pseudo-random yes. Pi is defined before you calculate it, so its not random, just unknowable before you calculate each digit. If you pick digits that have not been calculated or formulated (or just not know to you) then it is for all practical purposes it is random.
TL;DR version
No, but you can use it as such for simple applications