In the real world, probability is a tough thing to characterize. If I roll a die, what does it mean to say that it has a one-sixth chance of coming up 5? We say that the outcome is random because we ...

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 ...

Fast randomness A diagram of the quantum random number generator on the photonic integrated chip. (Courtesy: Bing Bai and Yao Zheng) Smartphones could soon come equipped with a quantum-powered source ...

Prime numbers have captivated mathematicians for centuries with their unpredictable and seemingly random distribution. In a groundbreaking preprint study, researchers devised a novel method that ...

Random numbers are increasingly important to our digitally connected world, with applications that include e-commerce, cryptography, and cloud computing. Producing a large amount of truly random ...

RANDOMNESS IS A valuable commodity. Computer models of complex systems ranging from the weather to the stockmarket are voracious consumers of random numbers. Cryptography, too, relies heavily on ...