title: What's the benefit of seeding a random number generator with only prime numbers?
body: <p>While conducting some experiments in Java, my project supervisor reminded me to seed each iteration of the experiment with a different number. He also mentioned that I should use prime numbers for the seed values. This got me thinking &#8212; why primes? Why not any other number as the seed? Also, why must the prime number be sufficiently big? Any ideas? I would've asked him this myself, but its 4am here right now, everyone's asleep, I just remembered this question and I'm burning to know the answer (I'm sure you know the feeling).</p>
  
  <p>It would be nice if you could provide some references, I'm very interested in the math/concept behind all this!</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong></p>
  
  <p>I'm using java.util.Random.</p>
  
  <p><strong>FURTHER EDIT:</strong></p>
  
  <p>My professor comes from a C background, but I'm using Java. Don't know if that helps. It appears that using primes is his idiosyncrasy, but I think we've unearthed some interesting answers about generating random numbers. Thanks to everyone for the effort!</p>