In Part 1 and Part 2, we showed some properties of a classic pseudo-random number generator, the linear congruential generator. In this part, we will introduce a more recent generator, splitmix64. Splitmix64 was created in 2013 as part of Java 8.

We introduced in Part 1 the linear congruential generators. In this second part, we will show some defects of such generators, considering the case where the modulus is a power of 2.

Random number generators have many applications. They can be used to introduce a part of “luck” in a game (for example drawing cards in poker) but also for other tasks such as Monte Carlo simulations (drawing multiple “random” samples). In this first part, we will introduce a very well known pseudo-random number generator, the linear congruential generator.