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 ...

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 ...

These pseudo-random numbers suffice for low stakes uses like gaming, but for scientific simulations or cybersecurity, truly random numbers are important. In recent years scientists have turned to the ...

Because computers don't understand words or phrases in the same way people can, they speak a language of their own, using only two symbols: 0 and 1. This computing parlance is known as binary code, ...