From lava lamps to quantum dice: how random numbers rule your life

The modern world relies on random numbers. We need them for secure communication, password protection, weather forecasting, scientific research, traffic management, quality control, and even to select winners for affordable housing. But it's not easy to produce reliably random numbers. In fact, as reported in this BBC article, "The search for the random numbers that run our lives," "you can never prove that something is truly random, only that it is indistinguishable from random, based on your best analysis." — Read the rest

The post From lava lamps to quantum dice: how random numbers rule your life appeared first on Boing Boing.