Because of its importance, much scientific effort is devoted to understanding when a given process generates ‘good’ randomness. A process is represented by a device, or black box, producing bits (Fig.

Randomness would seem to make a mathematical statement harder to prove. In fact, it often does the opposite. Of all the tools available to the mathematician, randomness would seem to offer little ...

Understanding whether nature is deterministically predetermined or there are intrinsically random processes is a fundamental question that has attracted the interest of multiple thinkers, ranging from ...

These are not the kinds of objects that concern Scott Sheffield. Sheffield, a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studies shapes that are constructed by random ...

Avi Wigderson is the first recipient of both a Turing Award and an Abel Prize, math's top honor. Andrea Kane / Institute for Advanced Study The 2023 Turing Award—the computing world’s Nobel Prize ...

Researchers identified a problem that holds the key to whether all encryption can be broken -- as well as a surprising connection to a mathematical concept that aims to define and measure randomness.

When Charles Darwin declared that evolutionary variations occur by chance, many of his contemporaries were alarmed, worrying about the implications of chance for people’s belief in the God who ...

We all know what “fragile” means. But what is the opposite of fragile? If you are like me, your instinctive response would be “robust” or perhaps “durable.” But you would be wrong. Something that is ...