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 ...

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 ...

Because computers don't understand words or phrases in the same way people can, they speak a language of their own, using only two symbols: 0 and 1. This computing parlance is known as binary code, ...

If you want to start an argument in certain circles, claim to have a random number generation algorithm. Turns out that producing real random numbers is hard, which is why people often turn to strange ...

Computers struggle to create randomness, but a new approach may finally enable them to generate a truly random number. Such numbers are a vital ingredient for cryptographic algorithms and scientific ...

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a tiger by the toe – so the rhyme goes. But even children know that counting-out rhymes like this are no help at making a truly random choice. Perhaps you remember when ...

Microsoft Excel can do a lot of cool things. If you need it to generate random numbers, Susan Harkins can show you how. Over the last few months, I’ve written about several of Excel’s new dynamic ...

A quantum random-number generator has been developed that uses classical cryptography to certify that its output was produced by a quantum process. A truly random number is generated by a process ...