Generating a string of random numbers is easy. The hard part is proving that they’re random. As Dilbert creator Scott Adams once pointed out, “that’s the problem with randomness: you can never be sure ...

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 ...

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 ...

NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has formally removed Dual_EC_DRBG from its draft guidance on random number generators. This is ...

Researchers have come up with a way to generate truly random numbers using quantum mechanics. The method uses photons to generate a string of random ones and zeros, and leans on the laws of physics to ...

According to this post on the official V8 Javascript blog, the pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) that V8 Javascript uses in Math.random() is horribly flawed and getting replaced with something a ...

A software routine that produces a random number. Used in applications such as computer games and cryptographic key generation, random numbers are easily created in a computer due to many random ...

Since the dawn of written history, people have exploited the randomness of a roll of a die to inject their games with the thrill of the unpredictable. Today, randomness is finding myriad other uses, ...