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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

“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 ...

Physicists have completed a study comparing the "randomness" in pi to that produced by random number generators. They have found that while sequences of digits from pi are indeed an acceptable ...