Pseudorandom

This is a place for thought without too much filter.  Things that I consider interesting or useful.  Things that either shape my point of view or might be new to me or you.

Why RANDU?  RANDU is the name of a pseudorandom (not truly random) number generator first developed in the 1960s.  

To quote wikipedia

IBM's RANDU is widely considered to be one of the most ill-conceived random number generators ever designed, and was described as "truly horrible" by Donald Knuth.  It fails the spectral test badly for dimensions greater than 2, and every integer result is odd. However, at least eight low-order bits are dropped when converted to single-precision (32 bit, 24 bit mantissa) floating-point.

The reason for choosing these particular values is that with a 32-bit-integer word size, the arithmetic ... could be done quickly, using special features of some computer hardware.

What's here may appear random, but there will often be a traceable train of thought.  Some of it may appear to be lazy brainstorming, but there's a reason for that.