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Canada's 'Random' Immigration Lottery Uses Microsoft Excel, Which Isn't Actually Random (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Last year, Canada introduced a new lottery system used to extend permanent-resident status to the parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens. The process was designed to randomly select applicants in order to make the process fairer than the old first-come, first-served system. There's just one problem: the software used to run the lottery isn't actually random. The Globe and Mail reported the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) uses Microsoft Excel to run the immigration lottery to select 10,000 people for permanent resident status from a field of about 100,000 applications received each year. Experts warned that the random number generating function in Excel isn't actually random and may put some applicants at a disadvantage.
First, it's best to understand just how the lottery system works. An Access to Information request filed by The Globe and Mail shows that IRCC inputs the application number for every person entering the lottery into Excel, then assigns them a random number to each using a variation of the program's RAND command. They then sort the list from smallest to largest based on the random number assigned and take the first 10,000 applications with the lowest numbers. The system puts a lot of faith in Excel's random function, which it might not deserve. According to Universite de Montreal computer science professor Pierre L'Ecuyer, Excel is "very bad" at generating random numbers because it relies on an old generator that is out of date. He also warned that Excel doesn't pass statistical tests and is less random than it appears, which means some people in the lottery may actually have a lower chance of being selected than others.
First, it's best to understand just how the lottery system works. An Access to Information request filed by The Globe and Mail shows that IRCC inputs the application number for every person entering the lottery into Excel, then assigns them a random number to each using a variation of the program's RAND command. They then sort the list from smallest to largest based on the random number assigned and take the first 10,000 applications with the lowest numbers. The system puts a lot of faith in Excel's random function, which it might not deserve. According to Universite de Montreal computer science professor Pierre L'Ecuyer, Excel is "very bad" at generating random numbers because it relies on an old generator that is out of date. He also warned that Excel doesn't pass statistical tests and is less random than it appears, which means some people in the lottery may actually have a lower chance of being selected than others.
This.
Canadians (and everyone) always complaining about how America doesn't just accept all the mexicans.
Meanwhile, they are even more strict.
That said people all over the world are hypocrites about this.
The same people keeping mexicans out of the US and chinese out of canada complain when Italy tries to keep the africans out.
Even dumber, some other EU countries complain that Italy should accept them, but wouldn't dream of taking them themselves.
That's effectively the position of Democrats.
Is it? Can you quote a single Democrat saying this? Ever?
No, I didn't think so.
This is technically the libertarian position
Libertarianism also favors small government, freedom of association and private property rights, all of which are severely limited; those are necessary prerequisites for libertarian style open borders.
Yep. Libertarians are pretty good at avoiding mentioning their position on the hot-button issue of immigration. Guns and drugs, that's what they want to talk about.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That's effectively the position of Democrats.
Didn't seem to be Obama's position; he still holds the record for most immigrants deported in any presidental administration, 2.7 million: http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/01/04/deportation-numbers-2016/
(although Donald may be working on breaking that record)
I think you're confusing libertarians with anarchists. Libertarians believe in strong property rights, which naturally implies borders and a need for some entity to enforce them. Some would argue that doesn't necessarily need to be a government, but historically that has been a major role of governments.
Most libertarians probably wouldn't care about immigration if the U.S. had no welfare state as was historically the case throughout most of the country's history. Once you got off the boat you were on your own, but plenty of people were perfectly happy with that arrangement. This generally worked quite well with the homestead system since anyone who wanted to move west could do so and a large number of immigrants did. You had the freedom to make something of yourself and if you couldn't that was your own problem.
However, the reality in modern America is that the government is expected to care for anyone who shows up and pay for their children's education and healthcare. That necessarily means taxation, which libertarians are generally loath to agree to outside of the limited government functions that they're in favor of, so they'll tend to be less in favor of immigration with those kinds of strings attached to it. If everyone immigrating from Mexico were a doctor, engineer, or otherwise highly skilled such that they'd pay more into the system than they get out of it, I suspect there'd be no disagreement with letting in as many people who fall into that category either.
"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere."
- Hillary Clinton
Must be nice to be ignorant of history.
Mexico had alot of problems that were never replicated in the US. Spanish and English colonization was very different.
Your remarks remind me of the times my Mother used to tell me that Israel turned desert into farmland. Remarkably ignorant of history.
Cheap storage VM.