Computers are known to be precise and — usually — repeatable. That’s why it is so hard to get something that seems random out of them. Yet random things are great for games, encryption, and multimedia ...

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 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 ...