Not Random? OR IS IT

[al_lupoo]

Assume that the software was supposed to choose selectees uniformly (in respect to Application Date & Time) from among all applicants.

There are 100,000 selectees. All applications happened in 30 days = 720 hours.
So this means that every hour (to ensure uniform distribution in respect to Applicaton date & time) -> 100,000 / 720 = 140 selectees must be chosen.
Would this mean that if I apply at 3am in the morning when there are less people applying, I have a greater chance of winning?

Or should the uniformity be by the "minute".
It means that 2.3 people should be selected every minute.
Would this mean that if I apply for myself, my wife and my children within the same minute from paralel computers, I can increase my chance of winning?

Or should the uniformity be by the "day".
It means that 3333 people should be selected every day.
So which day would the least number of people apply. I would guess ti would be on the 15th day.


Any kind of KNOWLEDGE can give you an unfair adantage. If there is NO KNOWLEDGE, than the selectees could not have manipulated the system. Hence, the outcome is a random group.

If someone were to check the current selectees, they would find that, all education levels, ages, etc are uniformly distributed which is the desired result.

(facebook, DV Lottery 2012)

 

[raevsky]

Whenever you apply, your chances are the same.

 

[direstra1ts]

@al_lupoo: i like the way you analyse the things, it's good to think like this, but i think they do it randomly not in a specific time unless time is something remain secret between the US DV Lottery and the Company that created the software

 

[raevsky]

all applicants will have an equal chance of being selected.And it shouldn't depend on the date you've applied for a lottery, and neither from any other factors..

It is not really written anywhere about any kind of factors.
I believe the reason why DOS started suspecting something is wrong not because in one particular region enormous amount of wins was concentrated around 2 days. But because the same story with the same days occurred in at least two other largest regions - totally in at least 3 regions: Europe, Asia and Africa. The lottery is conducted independently in different regions, and the fact the winning dates coincided in at least 3 different regions is really suspicious. Later they found some kind of error in their software, that led to incorrect selection of time interval. Not really random, I guess.
I also speculate that if for Europe it would be October 5th and 6th, for Africa another time interval (like October 12th through 17th) and for Asia a third one (like October 22nd to 26th) that would not be a problem. At least there are fair truly random ways to conduct the lottery where behavior like that would actually happen.
Actually, there is a second problem with the lottery. They still selected 90,000 to 100,000 winners, as before. With the new way of selecting them the number should be 30%-40% higher to satisfy the 50,000 quota worldwide. Either they forgot to adjust the number of wins or the algorithm even for 1 single region behaved not the way they intended.

Anyway, the official reason why they believe it was not truly random was not because in Europe the wins pointed to 2 days, or not because that happened in Asia, or not because that happened in Africa. Instead, they said that that happened in more than 90% entries worldwide, which means at least three regions with the same dates, while draws for different regions should be conducted independently from each other. They also mentioned not only the time intervals coincided, but that happened with the first time interval. Maybe they just incorrectly selected the time interval to be always the first one instead of truly random time interval for each region independent from time intervals for other regions

 

[sadib888]

You probably just shouldn't, whether it's legal or not.