Publishing date: 2025-09-14 08:45:00+0200
       
       I like random numbers. They are useful; whether it's making a
       decision ("coffee or tea"), performing a Monte-Carlo Simulation
       ("if we have 5-10 critical incidents per week, with a workaround
       time of 4-8 hours each, how many people do we need to perform 24/7
       services taking sick leave and vacation into account") or if doing
       solo Role Playing Games ("Critical hit? Critical FAIL, lol!").
       
       I always have dice with me, at my desk I do have a Magic Eight Ball
       and because I need a lot of random numbers with good quality really
       fast, my workstation has a "Infinite Noise TRNG" hardware random
       number generator.
       
       But if you want to do that in your head, good luck. We humans suck
       at inventing random numbers. It's really that bad.
       
       But Marsaglia, the inventor of the Diehard suite, came up with a
       clever idea how to create good-enough random numbers in your head
       with very simple math, as John D. Cook reported [1] in his blog.
       
       It's really pretty simple, I just lift it from John's site as it's
       trivial:
       
       ```python
       state = 42 # Set the seed to any two digit number
       def random_digit():
           tens = lambda n: n // 10
           ones = lambda n: n % 10
           global state
           state = tens(state) + 6*ones(state)
           return ones(state)
       ```
       
       But... last night, when I tried to fall asleep, I was generating
       random numbers rather than counting sheep, and *bam*, I found
       something unexpected. The number `59` converged into itself, just
       like the trivial case `0`. Meaning:
       
        * If you pick `59` as the random seed, it will only return a `9` a
        the next state will also be `59`.
       
       So much for getting sleep... 
       
       Update: John updated his posting, confirming my findings. Wooho!
       
 (HTM) [1] A mental random number generator
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