Random numbers are essential for secure cyber communications. But making truly random numbers is harder than it seems. Now scientists have devised a way to make the most random random numbers ever. A ...

While working towards his Computing and Information Systems degree at the University of London, [Jason Fenech] submitted an interesting proposal for generating random numbers using nothing more exotic ...

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 ...

You indirectly use random numbers online every day—to establish secure connections, to encrypt data, perhaps even to satisfy your gambling problem. But their ubiquity belies the fact that they’re ...

Even though rand() may be a good enough random number generator for making a video game, the patterns of random bits it spits out may not be sufficient for applications requiring truly random data.

Random numbers are increasingly important to our digitally connected world, with applications that include e-commerce, cryptography, and cloud computing. Producing a large amount of truly random ...

Skyrmions, tiny magnetic anomalies that arise in two-dimensional materials, can be used to generate true random numbers useful in cryptography and probabilistic computing. Whether for use in ...

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 ...