This is the archived version of this course from the Spring 2013 semester. You might find something more recent by visitning my teaching page.
You are given two PRNGs, A and B. You don't know how either one works internally, but you know that they both share the following properties in common:
Your task is to come up with a way of combining these two PRNGs to make a new PRNG that is even better than these two. Your combined PRNG should behave the same as A and B in that it is seeded with a single value from 0 up to 255, and it should produce numbers in the range of 0 up to 255. Here are the rules:
Describe your method clearly and simply. Then analyze it and tell me what the period length of your new PRNG would (hopefully) be. (Hint: what is the maximum period length that is possible in this situation? You can achieve it!)