The more random the numbers, the harder the encrypted message is to crack. Both the beauty and pitfalls of computing come down to the machines' exacting nature in "random" number generation.

But who certifies the random numbers, and what can we do with them afterward? When you ask a computer to give you a random number, code behind the scenes is doing an approximation of randomness.

Random numbers can enable auditors to make completely unbiased selections. Randomness is also key in security; if a password or code is an unguessable string of numbers, it's harder to crack.