On Thursday, 25 February 2016 at 17:27:25 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
This could be fixed by devising a PRNG that takes a given period n and generates all numbers in [0, n) in exactly n steps.

On reflection, I have a nasty feeling there's a fundamental problem with this proposed approach.

It's this: if you're relying on the PRNG having a period of n in which it covers exactly once each of the numbers from [0, n), then you're essentially outsourcing the random aspect of the permutation to the _seeding_ of this generator.

Now, what would be an appropriate seed-generation-mechanism to guarantee that this PRNG can select from all possible permutations with uniform probability?

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