Year of Award: 2003

Publication Information: The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 109, 2002, pp. 46-63

Summary: This paper examines the question of whether it is possible at least to obtain a mathematically rigorous and reasonable definition of randomness.

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About the Author: (from The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 109, (2002)) Sergio B. Volchan earned an M.S. in physics from the Pontiffcia Universidade Cat6lica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil. He then turned to mathematics, receiving his Ph.D. from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1995. After spending two years as a researcher at the Instituto de Matematica Pura e Aplicada (IMPA), he moved to the mathematics department of PUC-Rio, where he is assistant professor. His research interests are probability theory and its applications to mathematical physics.