term - What does 'seeding' mean?

Question

Very simple question. What does the term 'seeding' mean in general? I'll put the context, i.e., you must seed for random functions.

Answer 1

It means: pick a place to start.

Think of a pseudo random number generator as just a really long list of numbers. This list is circular, it eventually repeats.

To use it, you need to pick a starting place. This is called a "seed".