Seeding the pseudorandom number generator

[chase321 <cvbrady suddenlink net>]

I have been using Gnumeric for some time in the statistics classes I teach. 
This past semester, I did my first online section, and had them submit labs
using Gnumeric.  For one lab, I had them use the "randbetween" function to
generate random numbers.  9 of the 17 labs I received had identical sets of
random numbers.  This makes me more than a little suspicious, but I have
also seen students get the same sequence of numbers in the classroom.  I
know enough about pseudorandom number generators to know that if two people
start at the same point in the sequence, they're going to get the same  set
of numbers.  So I have two questions.
1) How is the pseudorandom number generator initialized (seeded)?
2) Is there any way to seed it manually?  I can find no function for this
mentioned in the manual.

Thanks for any help.
--Chase
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