1. If you read the blurb on Mersenne Twister it says: It is proved that the period is 2^19937-1..

    How do they know that?

    Explanations that go beyond "They used math"; and that are written in recognisable English are favoured here :)

  2. More generally, given a Perl function that produces a random number each time it is called, how could you detect when the sequence repeated itself?

    Bear in mind that the sequence might start at any point and could be very long.

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In reply to Challenge: Detecting sequences. by BrowserUk

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