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Asked: 2026-06-10T11:11:14+00:00

I know if you use the same seed with two different PRNG’s you’ll receive

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I know if you use the same seed with two different PRNG’s you’ll receive the same sequence of numbers. Does anyone know if it’s possible to generate the same number with two different seeds? If so, what are the odds?

I ran a test on this and received some strange results. If I have two instances of the same PRNG and I seed them with two different random seeds each time. The random number has to be between 0 and 1000. I get the same number 1046 times after 10,000,000 iterations. If I don’t seed them each time I receive about the same number about the same number of times (1033). What am I not understanding? I would think the odds would be much greater if you don’t re-seed each time (hmm, maybe not). Much like picking two cards from two decks. If I don’t shuffle the cards each time I would think the odds would be different then if I do.

Thanks,
Gary

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The odds depend on the PRNG you’re using. Assuming it generates numbers in an even distribution and your seed is chosen randomly* then it’s just a function of the number of different numbers you can represent.

    *Random means with no relation to the previous seed, and no knowledge of the algorithm being used.

    For a 32 bit integer you have 2^32 different numbers you can represent, so given one integer, the odds of another sufficiently-random number being the same is 1/(2^32).

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