Fake statistics generator how to#

To explain this we are going to use the example of a Visa card: Photo by Dom J from Pexels How to check if a credit card number is validīefore you start, it’s important to know that all Visa card numbers start with a 4. Most credit card numbers are based on something called a Luhn algorithm. Take the example of a credit card number. But generating data can be tricky for a couple of reasons.įake data is more than just random numbers. If it was easy to make convincing data, we probably wouldn’t need a tool. Or him, A lot of data is validated algorithmically But the problem is that data is hard to fake convincingly. Our first thought was to look for an available test data generator. We wanted to show our customers what the system would look like after 6 months of inviting and testing hundreds of candidates. We needed to do demos for our first prospective customers. This meant that we needed to build a number of different dummy profiles to see if the system stored and displayed them correctly. We needed fake data for a couple of reasons: What we needed was dummy data that looked real. We just needed candidate profiles for our application. We weren’t even looking for paying users at this point. Our story with fake data starts back when we first developed our SaaS tool, Devskiller. But the fact remains that for developers, software testers, and really anyone who has ever given a demo, fake data is essential and is surprisingly difficult to make up off the top of your head. This is not about fake news or tricking the masses. This is the story of how we turned a fun open source side project into something that has turned out to be really useful. But first, let me tell you the story of how it came about. We recently released DataFairy, a free tool that generates test data. By Tom Winter How our test data generator makes fake data look real Photo by Buzz Andersen on Unsplash