Before computers and algorithms were developed to generate random numbers, there were dice. Middle Eastern tombs uncovered cubical dice dating back to the 20th century BC—but it’s believed they’re ...

Random numbers are crucial for computing, but our current algorithms aren’t truly random. Researchers at Brown University have now found a way to tap into the fluctuations of skyrmions to generate ...

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 ...

Random numbers are a precious commodity, whether expressed as strings of decimal digits or simply 1s and 0s. Computer scientist George Marsaglia of Florida State University, however, likes giving them ...

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek explores the secrets of the cosmos. Read previous columns here. Many summers ago, I discovered a book called “A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – If you wanted a random number, historically you could do worse than to pick a sequence from the string of digits in pi. But Purdue University scientists now say other sources ...

Mathematicians concerned with cryptography need novel ways of generating random numbers in order to securely transmit data such as a credit card number or especially private email. But it's hard for ...

Randomness can be a Good Thing. If your system generates truly random numbers, it can avoid and withstand network packet collisions just one of many applications. Here's what you need to know about ...

Random numbers are invaluable. They're used in the encryption that makes online banking secure. Economists, physicists, pollsters, and casinos rely on them. Yet until recently, producing large sets of ...

Computers are known to be precise and — usually — repeatable. That’s why it is so hard to get something that seems random out of them. Yet random things are great for games, encryption, and multimedia ...