Applications of randomness

Randomness has many uses in science, art, statistics, cryptography, gaming, gambling, and other fields. For example, random assignment in randomized controlled trials helps scientists to test hypotheses, and random numbers or pseudorandom numbers help video games such as video poker. These uses have different levels of requirements, which leads to the use of different methods. Mathematically, there are distinctions between randomization, pseudorandomization, and quasirandomization, as well as between random number generators and pseudorandom number generators. For example, applications in cryptography usually have strict requirements, whereas other uses (such as generating a "quote of the day") can use a looser standard of pseudorandomness. Unpredictable (by the humans involved) numbers (usually taken to be random numbers) were first investigated in the context of gambling developing, sometimes, pathological forms like apophenia. Many randomizing devices such as dice, shuffling playing cards, and roulette wheels, seem to have been developed for use in games of chance. Electronic gambling equipment cannot use these and so theoretical problems are less easy to avoid; methods of creating them are sometimes regulated by governmental gaming commissions. Modern electronic casino games contain often one or more random number generators which decide the outcome of a trial in the game. Even in modern slot machines, where mechanical reels seem to spin on the screen, the reels are actually spinning for entertainment value only. They eventually stop exactly where the machine's software decided they would stop when the handle was first pulled. It has been alleged that some gaming machines' software is deliberately biased to prevent true randomness, in the interests of maximizing their owners' revenue; the history of biased machines in the gambling industry is the reason government inspectors attempt to supervise the machines—electronic equipment has extended the range of supervision.