This review volume consists of a set of chapters written by leading scholars, most of them founders of their fields. It explores the connections of Randomness to other areas of scientific knowledge, especially its fruitful relationship to Computability and Complexity Theory, and also to areas such as Probability, Statistics, Information Theory, Biology, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Learning Theory and Artificial Intelligence. The contributors cover these topics without neglecting important philosophical dimensions, sometimes going beyond the purely technical to formulate age old questions relating to matters such as determinism and free will.The scope of Randomness Through Computation is novel. Each contributor shares their personal views and anecdotes on the various reasons and motivations which led them to the study of Randomness. Using a question and answer format, they share their visions from their several distinctive vantage points.

Computability and complexity theory are two central areas of research in theoretical computer science. This book provides a systematic, technical development of "algorithmic randomness" and complexity for scientists from diverse fields.

The present textbook treats the effects of temperature upon weakly disordered hydrogenated amorphous silicon and hydrogenated amorphous germanium, as well as the effect of weak disorder upon more complex systems such as GaAs and Al2Gal-xAs alloy. The effects of disorder-induced band tailing upon deep levels in compound semiconductor alloys are also studied.

From the ancients' first readings of the innards of birds to your neighbor's last bout with the state lottery, humankind has put itself into the hands of chance. Today life itself may be at stake when probability comes into play--in the chance of a false negative in a medical test, in the reliability of DNA findings as legal evidence, or in the likelihood of passing on a deadly congenital disease--yet as few people as ever understand the odds. This book is aimed at the trouble with trying to learn about probability. A story of the misconceptions and difficulties civilization overcame in progressing toward probabilistic thinking, Randomness is also a skillful account of what makes the science of probability so daunting in our own day. To acquire a (correct) intuition of chance is not easy to begin with, and moving from an intuitive sense to a formal notion of probability presents further problems. Author Deborah Bennett traces the path this process takes in an individual trying to come to grips with concepts of uncertainty and fairness, and also charts the parallel path by which societies have developed ideas about chance. Why, from ancient to modern times, have people resorted to chance in making decisions? Is a decision made by random choice fair? What role has gambling played in our understanding of chance? Why do some individuals and societies refuse to accept randomness at all? If understanding randomness is so important to probabilistic thinking, why do the experts disagree about what it really is? And why are our intuitions about chance almost always dead wrong? Anyone who has puzzled over a probability conundrum is struck by the paradoxes and counterintuitive results that occur at a relatively simple level. Why this should be, and how it has been the case through the ages, for bumblers and brilliant mathematicians alike, is the entertaining and enlightening lesson of Randomness.

Random Number Generators, Principles and Practices has been written for programmers, hardware engineers, and sophisticated hobbyists interested in understanding random numbers generators and gaining the tools necessary to work with random number generators with confidence and knowledge. Using an approach that employs clear diagrams and running code examples rather than excessive mathematics, random number related topics such as entropy estimation, entropy extraction, entropy sources, PRNGs, randomness testing, distribution generation, and many others are exposed and demystified. If you have ever Wondered how to test if data is really random Needed to measure the randomness of data in real time as it is generated Wondered how to get randomness into your programs Wondered whether or not a random number generator is trustworthy Wanted to be able to choose between random number generator solutions Needed to turn uniform random data into a different distribution Needed to ensure the random numbers from your computer will work for your cryptographic application Wanted to combine more than one random number generator to increase reliability or security Wanted to get random numbers in a floating point format Needed to verify that a random number generator meets the requirements of a published standard like SP800-90 or AIS 31 Needed to choose between an LCG, PCG or XorShift algorithm Then this might be the book for you.