A pseudorandom process is a process that appears to be random but is not. Pseudorandom sequences typically exhibit statistical randomness while being generated by an entirely deterministic causal process. Such a process is easier to produce than a genuinely random one, and has the benefit that it can be used again and again to produce exactly the same numbers - useful for testing and fixing software.

To generate truly random numbers requires precise, accurate, and repeatable system measurements of absolutely non-deterministic processes. Linux uses, for example, various system timings (like user keystrokes, I/O, or least-significant digit voltage measurements) to produce a pool of random numbers. It attempts to constantly replenish the pool, depending on the level of importance, and so will issue a random number. This system is an example, and similar to those of dedicated hardware random number generators.

The generation of random numbers has many uses (mostly in statistics, for random sampling, and simulation). Before modern computing, researchers requiring random numbers would either generate them through various means (dice, cards, roulette wheels, etc.) or use existing random number tables.

Avi Wigderson (Hebrew: אבי ויגדרזון‎; b. 9 September 1956) is an Israeli mathematician and computer scientist, a professor of mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His research interests include complexity theory, parallel algorithms, graph theory, cryptography, distributed computing, and neural networks.

Wigderson did his undergraduate studies at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, graduating in 1980, and went on to graduate study at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in 1983 for work in computational complexity under the supervision of Richard Lipton. After short-term positions at the University of California, Berkeley, the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, he joined the faculty of Hebrew University in 1986. In 1999 he also took a position at the Institute for Advanced Study, and in 2003 he gave up his Hebrew University position to take up full-time residence at the IAS.

Wigderson received the Nevanlinna Prize in 1994 for his work on computational complexity. Along with Omer Reingold and Salil Vadhan he won the 2009 Gödel Prize for work on the zig-zag product of graphs, a method of combining smaller graphs to produce larger ones used in the construction of expander graphs.

Ken Perlin is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at New York University, founding director of the Media Research Lab at NYU, and the Director of the Games for Learning Institute. His research interests include graphics, animation, multimedia, and science education. He developed or was involved with the development of techniques such as Perlin noise, Hypertexture, Real-Time Interactive Character Animation, and computer-user interfaces such as Zooming User Interfaces, stylus-based input, and most recently, cheap, accurate multi-touch input devices. He is also the Chief Technology Advisor of ActorMachine, LLC.

His invention of Perlin noise in 1985 has become a standard that is used in both computer graphics and movement.

Perlin was founding director of the NYU Media Research Laboratory and also directed the NYU Center for Advanced Technology from 1994 to 2004. He was the System Architect for computer generated animation at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. 1979-1984, where he worked on Tron. He has served on the Board of Directors of the New York chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Software Industry Association. Perlin received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University, and a B.A. in theoretical mathematics from Harvard University. He is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at NYU.

Michael George Luby is a mathematician and computer scientist, VP Technology at Qualcomm and former co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Digital Fountain. In coding theory he is known for leading the invention of the Tornado codes and the LT codes. In cryptography he is known for his contributions showing that any one-way function can be used as the basis for private cryptography, and for his analysis, in collaboration with Charles Rackoff, of the Feistel cipher construction. His distributed algorithm to find a maximal independent set in a computer network has also been very influential. He has also contributed to average-case complexity.

Luby received his B.Sc. in mathematics from MIT in 1975. In 1983 he was awarded a Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley. In 1996-1997, while at the International Computer Science Institute, he led the team that invented Tornado codes. These were the first LDPC codes based on an irregular degree design that has proved crucial to all later good LDPC code designs, which provably achieve channel capacity for the erasure channel, and which have linear time encoding and decoding algorithms. In 1998 Luby left ICSI to found the Digital Fountain company, and shortly thereafter in 1998 he invented the LT codes, the first practical fountain codes. Qualcomm acquired Digital Fountain in 2009.

Jean Bourgain (born 28 February 1954) is a Belgian mathematician. He has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and, from 1985 until 1995, professor at Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques at Bures-sur-Yvette in France, and since 1994 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He is currently an editor for the prestigious Annals of Mathematics.

He received his Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1977.

His work is in various areas of mathematical analysis such as the geometry of Banach spaces, harmonic analysis, analytic number theory, combinatorics, ergodic theory, partial differential equations, spectral theory and recently also in group theory. He has been recognised by a number of awards, most notably the Fields Medal in 1994.

In 2000 Bourgain connected the Kakeya problem to arithmetic combinatorics.

In 2009 Bourgain was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In 2010 he received the Shaw Prize in Mathematics.