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 ...

Take a look at Champernowne’s Constant. 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 ...

Do you feel nervous when you make a credit-card transaction using your mobile phone? Your worries could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to a low-cost device that could bring powerful cryptography ...

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 ...

Privacy is one of society’s most valued qualities. The ability to send private messages and to carry out financial transactions without fear of being monitored lies ...

There are a great variety of ways to build a random number generator, and similarly many ways to generate numbers that appear random, but in a pure mathematical sense generally aren’t. [Daniel Valuch] ...

“This is a marvelous step” toward more efficient random number generation, says Rajarshi Roy, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park who was not involved in the work. Random number ...

A random-bit-sequence generator is basic equipment for prototyping and testing any data-transmission system. You use such a generator when measuring BER (bit-error ...