Bhootkal Vartmankal Bhavisyatkal

In this article, we continue on from where we left.... We concluded in part 1 by saying that since atmospheric events are truly random, RNG's which use them would indeed produce random numbers. Or does it??? Read on... Let us again start with the most simplest of the physical events - tossing of a coin. We can only be sure that the probability of both a head and tail is equal and is half. We can not even tell the number of heads or tails we would get by tossing a coin 100 times(though we could say with certain confidence level say 90% that there would be 40 to 60 heads approximately, as your confidence level increases the range also increases. So for saying with 100% confidence, we would have to include the complete range - 0 to 100) leave alone the exact sequence of heads and tails. Now let us move further. What if i say the mass of the coin is 1 gram? Does it make any difference to what we have talked till now? Answer: YES it does. This is a very ...

I had a statistics class this weekend and our professor happened to talk about "random number generators"(for clarity sake: random number generators(RNG) is used to generate random numbers). He stated - "all random number generators in this world are not truly random, they are just pseudo-random". This is quite true since computers are basically zero-intelligence elements and there would be a particular formula using which it generates a random number. Hence however long the sequence is, after a particular time period the sequence of numbers would start repeating. Now this is a real issue when you consider areas like cryptography and military. These fields rely very heavily on the fact that the RNG's generate truly random numbers. This vulnerability was recently exposed by a group of scientist who cracked the formula/algorithm of a RNG(used for military purposes) with a minimal budget and a short time span of just 57 hours. This was a very serious thr...