Middle-square method
Método del medio del cuadrado
- Date
- 1946 · confidence low
- Place
- Los Alamos, New Mexico, United States
- Credited to
- John von Neumann
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A method for generating pseudorandom numbers that squares a seed number and extracts the middle digits of the result as the next number in the sequence, proposed by John von Neumann for simulations on early computers.
What it led to
- used in the earliest Monte Carlo calculations at Los Alamos
- revealed the limitations of deterministic random-number generators
- a precedent for later congruential pseudorandom generators