Extracting Randomness: How and Why - A survey - Computational Complexity, 1996. Proceedings., Eleventh Annual IEEE Conference on

Extractors are boolean functions that allow, in some precise sense, extraction o f randomness from somewhat random distributions. Extractors, and the closely related “Dispersers”, exhibit some of the most “random-like” properties of explicitly constructed combinatorial structures. In turn, extractors and dispersers have many applications in “removing randomness” in various settings, and in making randomized constructions explicit. This manuscript surveys extractors and dispersers: what they are, how they can be designed, and some of their applications. The work described is due t o of a long list of research papers b y various authors most notably b y David Zuckerman.