POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : seed/rand not so random? : Re: seed/rand not so random? Server Time
29 Jul 2024 22:25:51 EDT (-0400)
  Re: seed/rand not so random?  
From: Warp
Date: 12 May 2010 13:38:26
Message: <4beae792@news.povray.org>
Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> This property is shared by all software random number generators 
> that have no hardware source of randomness.

  No, this is a property of linear congruential generators. Higher-quality
RNGs don't suffer from this (or at least it's significantly less evident).

  As the name "linear congruential generator" suggests, there's a linear
relationship between the initial seed and the consequent stream of numbers.
Hence if the seed is changed linearly, so will the stream (although this is
often masked by how the numbers from the stream are used).

  I think you are confusing the property of pRNGs that a given seed always
gives the same random number stream (which is usually a desirable thing)
with the phenomenon described in this thread, namely the linear relationship
between the seed and the subsequent numbers.

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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