WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – If you wanted a random number, historically you could do worse than to pick a sequence from the string of digits in pi. But Purdue University scientists now say other sources ...

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 ...

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 ...

A truly random number is something that is surprisingly difficult to generate. A typical approach is to generate the required element of chance from a natural and unpredictable source, such as ...

Random number sequences are essential to a host of encryption schemes. But true randomness in the strict sense is not possible in the classical world; it only occurs in quantum-mechanical processes.

“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 ...

Random number generators in digital information systems make use of physical entropy sources such as electronic and photonic noise to add unpredictability to deterministically generated pseudo-random ...