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‘Super-random’ number generator

An implementation of Donald E. Knuth’s “‘Super-random’ number generator” given as an educational example of a bad pseudo random number generator in chapter 3.1 of his “The Art of Computer programming” series of books.

The input value 6065038420 is a fixed point of the algorithm. For other input values, the algorithm has a cycle length of around 3000, making it a pretty bad random number generator.

Knuth summarized these properties by concluding “The moral of this story is that random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random. Some theory should be used.”