Random numbers are a precious commodity, whether expressed as strings of decimal digits or simply 1s and 0s. Computer scientist George Marsaglia of Florida State University, however, likes giving them ...

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 ...

Last year, when I attended the European Conference on Lasers and Electrooptics, one of the "big things" was "chaotic laser oscillators for security purposes." The basic idea is that chaotic systems ...