Quite a while ago, while discussing Monte Carlo Integration with my students, the topic of choosing sample locations came up, and we discussed low-discrepancy sequences (a.k.a. quasi-random sequences). In a low-discrepancy sequence, values generated look kind of uniform-random, but avoids clumping. A closer examination reveal that they are suspiciously well-spaced. That’s what we want in Monte Carlo integration.
But how do we generate such sequences? Well, there are many ways to do so. Some more amusing than other, some more structured than others. One of the early example, Halton sequences (c. 1964) is particularly well behaved: it generates 0, 0.5, then 0.25 and 0.75, then 0.125, 0.375, 0.625, and 0.875, etc. It does so with a rather simple binary trick.