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 ...

Hackers love random numbers, or more accurately, the pursuit of them. It turns out that computers are so good at following our exacting instructions that they are largely incapable of doing anything ...

Quick! Think of a number between 1 and 10…was it 7? If it was, don't feel too bad, as human brains are notoriously bad at both true randomness and understanding probability. Even if you're too ...

In the real world, probability is a tough thing to characterize. If I roll a die, what does it mean to say that it has a one-sixth chance of coming up 5? We say that the outcome is random because we ...

Are Powerball Drawings and 'Quick Pick' Numbers Really Random? The math behind all the discussion of tonight's Powerball drawing assumes true randomness – equal likelihood for each number to be chosen ...

The math behind all the discussion of tonight’s Powerball drawing assumes true randomness – equal likelihood for each number to be chosen, both in the drawing itself and, crucially, in the process of ...