title: Is 161803398 A 'Special' Number? Inside of Math.Random()
body: <p><em>I suspect the answer is '<strong>Because of Math</strong>', but I was hoping someone could give a little more insight at a basic level...</em></p>
  
  <p>I was poking around in the BCL source code today, having a look at how some of the classes I've used before were actually implemented.  I'd never thought about how to generate (pseudo) random numbers before, so I decided to see how it was done.</p>
  
  <p>Full source here: <a href="http://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/random.cs#29">http://referencesource.microsoft.com/#mscorlib/system/random.cs#29</a></p>
  
  <pre><code>private const int MSEED = 161803398; 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This MSEED value is used every time a Random() class is seeded.</p>
  
  <p>Anyway, I saw this 'magic number' - 161803398 - and I don't have the foggiest idea of why that number was selected.  It's not a prime number or a power of 2.  It's not 'half way' to a number that seemed more significant.  I looked at it in binary and hex and well, it just looked like a number to me.</p>
  
  <p>I tried searching for the number in Google, but I found nothing. </p>