Are you convinced that the shuffle mode on your iPod is messing with your mind? Or that certain numbers are bound to come up in the next lottery? If yes, you may be holding on to some serious ...

Ask a designer or artist if any aspect of their process is random. The answer will likely reveal a complex relationship between human cognition, digital media, authorship, and even conceptions of ...

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 ...

Ask a computer to pick a random number and you’ll probably get a response that isn’t completely unpredictable. Because they are deterministic automatons, computers struggle to generate numbers that ...

Random chance mechanics in video games can be frustrating. Missing a 90% shot in XCOM, when you really need it to hit, can cause some players to throw their controller or rage quit. But not all ...

Physical theories enable us to make predictions. We can ask ‘what would happen if …’ and reason about the answer, even in scenarios that would be virtually impossible to set up in reality 2. Each ...

When you step inside Cloudflare's San Francisco office, the first thing you notice is a wall of lava lamps. Visitors often stop to take selfies, but the peculiar installation is more than an artistic ...