I think they're looking deeper, like how would you generate "randomness" to produce a number between 1 and 7, like a linear congruential generator.

Three!

Five!

This problem is ill-defined. What kind of number? I would tell them I select pi if they don't tell you what kind of objects you are working with.

For floats: (new Random()).nextFloat() * 6 + 1; For ints: (new Random().nextInt(6) + 1; Use the 1-argument Random constructor with a random seed for non-deterministic results.