A study on the randomness of the digits of π

We apply a newly-developed computational method, Geometric Random Inner Products (GRIP), to quantify the randomness of number sequences obtained from the decimal digits of π. Several members from the GRIP family of tests are used, and the results from π are compared to those calculated from other random number generators. These include a recent hardware generator based on an actual physical process, turbulent electroconvection. We find that the decimal digits of π are in fact good candidates for random number generators and can be used for practical scientific and engineering computations.