To simulate chance occurrences, a computer can’t literally toss a coin or roll a die. Instead, it relies on special numerical recipes for generating strings of shuffled digits that pass for random ...

Randomness is incredibly useful. People often draw straws, throw dice or flip coins to make fair choices. Random numbers can enable auditors to make completely unbiased selections. Randomness is also ...

Researchers developed a fiber-optic quantum random number generator that uses single-photon path superposition and a validated stochastic model to guarantee high-quality quantum randomness. Operating ...

Using a single, chip-scale laser, scientists have managed to generate streams of completely random numbers at about 100 times the speed of the fastest random-numbers generator systems that are ...

Randomness sits at the heart of everything we do online. Many encryption algorithms depend upon randomly generated numbers to work, and that’s just one example of many. But how random is random? It’s ...

Whether it’s a game of D&D or encrypting top-secret information, a wide array of methods are available for generating the needed random numbers with high enough entropy for their use case. For a ...

RANDOMNESS IS A valuable commodity. Computer models of complex systems ranging from the weather to the stockmarket are voracious consumers of random numbers. Cryptography, too, relies heavily on ...