Programming Praxis

We saw an “in-your-head” random number generator in a previous exercise, but I found it hard to operate. Today’s exercise, due to George Marsaglia is a random number generator that even a dummy like me can work in his head:

Choose a two-digit number as a seed. Then form a new two-digit number by adding the ten’s digit and six times the unit digit. For instance, if you start from 23, the sequence is 23 → 20 → 02 → 12 → 13 → 19 → 55 → 35 …. Then the sequence of random digits is the unit digit of each two-digit number. This operation produces the numbers 1 through 58 as seeds; the ten digits each occur six times, except that nine and zero occur five times (because 59 and 60 are not part of the sequence).

Your task is to implement Marsaglia’s mental RNG, and experiment with it to determine its effectiveness. When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.

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