A function where small changes in input always result in large changes in output
- by snowlord
I would like an algorithm for a function that takes n integers and returns one integer. For small changes in the input, the resulting integer should vary greatly. Even though I've taken a number of courses in math, I have not used that knowledge very much and now I need some help...
An important property of this function should be that if it is used with coordinate pairs as input and the result is plotted (as a grayscale value for example) on an image, any repeating patterns should only be visible if the image is very big.
I have experimented with various algorithms for pseudo-random numbers with little success and finally it struck me that md5 almost meets my criteria, except that it is not for numbers (at least not from what I know). That resulted in something like this Python prototype (for n = 2, it could easily be changed to take a list of integers of course):
import hashlib
def uniqnum(x, y):
return int(hashlib.md5(str(x) + ',' + str(y)).hexdigest()[-6:], 16)
But obviously it feels wrong to go over strings when both input and output are integers. What would be a good replacement for this implementation (in pseudo-code, python, or whatever language)?
