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 ...

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 ...

Rabih Alameddine, who won the National Book Award last month, has described his idiosyncratic approach as “childish ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...