If your name gets picked for jury duty, it’s because a computer used a random number generator to select it. The same goes for tax audits or when you opt for a quick pick lottery ticket. But how can ...

How can you generate random bits? Some people think it’s not easy, others will tell you that it’s pretty damn hard, and then there are those who wonder if it is possible at all. Of course, it is easy ...

Extracting regularities from temporal sequences of events is central to human cognition. By identifying patterns, people form predictions about upcoming events. If, when waiting at a train crossing, ...

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 ...

Our world runs on randomly generated numbers and without them a surprising proportion of modern life would break down. So, why are they so hard to find? The friends did their best to explain what they ...

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...

A random noise generator is pretty handy when working with music, and building one using a micro-controller can be pretty trivial. So it’s nice when someone comes along and builds it from a few analog ...

The static from a old radio is a form of random interference caused by electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere (Credit: Getty Images) Our world runs on randomly generated numbers and without them a ...