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Probabilistic data structures are used when certainty is not needed.

Bloom filters for example can serve as a filter: to work only on 50% of the data to effectively speed up your calculations by 100%.

If 50% of your misses are bloom filtered away, you got rid of 50% of your lookups to storage.

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In fact, most cryptography only works off of probability. Not only keys or RNG, but also on routine algorithms like finding a prime number.

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> In fact, most cryptography only works off of probability. Not only keys or RNG, but also on routine algorithms like finding a prime number.

Usually in cryptography problems when we assume that our assumptions hold (e.g. there's no better method than a semi sophisticated brute force), you get that probability down to a negligible number. And I recall learning that some key generating systems will even have a list of known cracked large primes, and check to make sure what it generates isn't in that list (in case the systems RNG is biased.)

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