Randomness

nothing really behaves randomly in a computer, everything is 100% reproducible

but possible combinations of state often make it look as if something behaves unpredictably

if you want real randomness, you need to observe a physical phenomenon (e.g. atmospheric noise)

true randomness is hard to achieve, but pseudo randomness is enough most of the time

int rand()

• Pseudorandom generator
• produces a sequence of numbers based on algorithm that humans can’t guess any better than by “chance”
• it’s a stateful function
• returns pseudo-random number between 0 and RAND_MAX
• included through <iostream> for some reason
• unless seeded, always returns same sequence of numbers

to seed, use function: void srand((unsigned) int seed)

best to use with time: srand((unsigned) time(0))