It’s a ridiculously easy sequence to make, and yet it fooled programs designed to root out underlying order in seemingly random numbers. David Gawen Champernowne was born in 1912.

Microsoft Excel can do a lot of cool things. If you need it to generate random numbers, Susan Harkins can show you how.

A new laser’s chaotic light beam lets the device generate multiple number sequences at once, similar to throwing multiple dice at a time.