If your name gets picked for jury duty, it’s because a computer used a random number generator to select it. The same goes for tax audits or when you opt for a quick pick lottery ticket. But how can ...

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...

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 ...

Extracting regularities from temporal sequences of events is central to human cognition. By identifying patterns, people form predictions about upcoming events. If, when waiting at a train crossing, ...

Our world runs on randomly generated numbers and without them a surprising proportion of modern life would break down. So, why are they so hard to find? The friends did their best to explain what they ...

Open your favorite social media platform and note how many friends or followers you have. Specifically, note the first digit of this number. For example, if you have 400 friends, the leading digit is ...

The primary purpose of a password is to serve as an unique verification identifier for a given user. Ideally, the password for a given website or service should be both random and unique; if the ...

The static from a old radio is a form of random interference caused by electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere (Credit: Getty Images) Our world runs on randomly generated numbers and without them a ...