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Programming error invalidates US Diversity Visa lottery results
- troydavis 15y agoPosted results have been rescinded and the lottery is being redone. state.gov site links to video with more info: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1857622883?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAGWqYgE~,KxHPzbPALrFGi6o0QhQY9IxyliWBJ3Vq&bctid=942119090001 http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1857622883?b...
- Groxx 15y agoImportant bit that's in the video but not on the page: >"...[a programming error had caused] more than 90% of the selectees to come from the first two days of the registration period ..." The registration period was 30 days, and had "many" entries each day. That's... shockingly bad.
- hugh3 15y agoWould be much more interesting if we knew how the results wound up nonrandom.
- cosgroveb 15y agoMaybe something like the following? randWinnerID = (int) Math.random();
- rorrr 15y agoIt was much worse, all the "winners" were the people who submitted their applications in the first 2 or 3 days.
- ez77 15y agoDo you have a reference? That would be really messed up...
- inrev 15y agoIt says that in the video message posted: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1857622883?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAGWqYgE~,KxHPzbPALrFGi6o0QhQY9IxyliWBJ3Vq&bctid=942119090001 http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1857622883?b...
- chernevik 15y agoCrucial, actually. They should provide enough transparency to assure that "not random" != "favored persons not selected".
- hugh3 15y agoThat's a bit conspiracy-heavy for my tastes. If someone in a position of power in the State Department wants to give a particular individual a greencard there are easier ways than keeping on re-running the greencard lottery 'til they get one.
- chernevik 15y agoYou'll note I make no accusations. Such a reversal requires transparency as an ordinary matter of course. There is no reason they shouldn't do this on a Linux system, using published code, under a published procedure. Had they done that, they would't have screwed it up in the first place.
- jey 15y agoWhy will it take two months to randomly select entries from a list?
- guan 15y agoThey probably want to make extra sure that there are no errors this time.
- cypherpunks01 15y agoThat's the problem with randomness, you can never be sure.
- rbanffy 15y agohttp://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/ http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/
- giberson 15y agoQ: Why was it necessary to invalidate the names that were selected? U.S. law requires that Diversity Immigrant visas be made available through a strictly random process. A computer programming error resulted in a selection that was not truly random. They maybe should be careful with their wording, since "not truly random" would basically disqualify any code based random generator. Overview of PRNG, TRNG for reading if you're unfamiliar: http://www.random.org/randomness/ http://www.random.org/randomness/
- rbanffy 15y agoI was about to ask how are they generating their random numbers now.
- aramadia 15y agoI doubt PRNG is the issue. PRNGs satisfy the criteria for equal likelihood of being selected which I believe is what they want. A truly stochastic process is not necessary.
- giberson 15y agoI wasn't suggesting that it was the issue. I was pointing out their QnA section uses the phrase "truly random" to explain why that specific set wasn't valid. Which semantically, "truly random" disqualifies all of their previous sets and not just this one. Their QnA section probably should have been more along the lines of "not appearing random enough".
- nwhitehead 15y agoOne issue with PRNGs used for lotteries like this is the seed size. For example, the law might say that every combination of 12 eligible people is equally likely to be selected for a jury. But the number of possible sets of 12 people can be very large, say 2^1024 for some population. If the initial seed of the PRNG only takes 320 bits, then it violates the law. There can only be 2^320 different combinations of 12 people selected, this means that by definition not all possible sets of the 2^1024 are equally likely (many have probability 0). If the law had said instead that each PERSON must be equally likely to be selected for the jury, then the PRNG would have been fine since the number of people is much lower than the seed space. I don't believe this was the issue here, but it's interesting. Reference with more examples: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=769827 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=769827
- vitalysh 15y agouh, imagine if you are one of the winners :/
- Groxx 15y ago>The results were not valid because they did not represent a fair, random selection of entrants, as required by U.S. law. How does one get so bad at using random numbers? Surely selecting random entries from a list isn't hard. `entries[rand*entries.count]`
- hvs 15y agoIf "rand" is generated by a computer and not from a stochastic process, it's not technically random.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Groxx 15y agoI'm fairly sure other, accepted government tasks have used PRNGs. So there would be precedence for doing so. If not, I'd roll a 10,000 sided die, and type it in by hand. (edit: or cow pie bingo. That has a long tradition of unbiased results.)
- lukeschlather 15y agoPrecedence and precedent have very different meanings. I think you meant to say that there is a precedent. That said, it sounds like a definition of random is clearly specified and it was not met, so precedent isn't important.
- SeoxyS 15y agoRolling a die isn't truly random either. Given the same environmental conditions and the same force vectors, you will always get the same result. I think their definition of true randomness is flawed. It does not matter whether it's truly random, rather it should about whether it's random to a point where it's out of the operator's control and ability to predict.
- Groxx 15y ago
- ubasu 15y agoHave they used the same software in prior years also, or is this because of a new software?
- SeoxyS 15y agoGood: I got rejected, I get a second shot. Bad: How can the State Department be so incompetent as to fuck this up? Also, why does it take months to generate this? I could do it with 15min and a simple script. Granted, any code generator is never truly random (Newtonian laws of physics pretty much forbid randomness,) but for all intents and purposes they're more than capable of handling a simple lottery.
- aramadia 15y agoUhh, Newtonian laws have really nothing to do with this. Its more information theory, you can't get more entropy from what you put in. Also, it is clear now that the Newtonian model is not an accurate view of the universe, and that there are fairly random events such as radioactive decay.
- SeoxyS 15y agoThere's an interesting article on random.org that talks about just that. http://www.random.org/randomness/ http://www.random.org/randomness/ This is dwelling into philosophy, but some argue that the universe is deterministic. With absolute knowledge of every particle in the universe, you could predict the entire course of everything that would happen in the future. The key is not to find true true randomness, which can reasonably be argued not to exist, but rather to find a system that is chaotic enough to be beyond control or predictability, and use that to generate random numbers. Weather systems, radioactivity, etc. are examples of this. Now I don't know much about quantum physics, and I hear that that might be an alternative to that—but my point is that I don't think it matters. A generator doesn't have to be truly random, it should just be random enough.
- scott_s 15y agoWith absolute knowledge of every particle in the universe... That's not possible, as stated by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The more you know about a particle's position, the less you know about its momentum, and vice-versa. This property is largely agreed upon to be an inherent property of the universe, and not just a technical limitation.
- Someone 15y agoAccording to dutch teletext, the error was a very simple one: not all applicants were entered into the draw. It does not give further details.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ez77 15y agoI participated, and things looked bad enough when I saw that IE7 or lower was requiered... The Vista boot option, which I never use, alas did not help.
- rubashov 15y agoThe Visa Lottery is infuriating. It's almost as stupid as the family sponsorship driving our visa allocations. The purpose of an immigration policy is to serve the citizenry. Only the most useful and "profitable" people should be let in, period.
- hudibras 15y agoSo much for "All men are created equal," eh? Over ten million people each year apply through this program for only 50,000 green cards. In a nation of 300 million people, I think we can manage this.
- rubashov 15y agoStop and think about how absurd this is. Ten million people apply and we pick randomly, rather than take the cream. Is this not plainly insane?
- sukuriant 15y agoGiven the values that the United States was founded on, in the purest sense, Why?
- rubashov 15y agoI'm not sure what founding values you're talking about. A cursory reading of the founders plainly reveals they viewed America as a nation of and for Europeans. Immigration policy for most of American history explicitly excluded non-whites, and often sought to exclude southern and eastern europeans. I'm not advocating a racist immigration policy, as the US was founded on, just one that serves the people living here. After all the purpose of the constitution is to "secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity". That means the country is for citizens and their bloodlines, not foreigners.
- sukuriant 15y agoI suppose I more mean "all men created equal". And the "American Dream" of coming to this country from nothing and making it big. A meritocratic process, or a process that has a likelihood of being gamed/manipulated/bought, would seem to detract from that possibility. I suppose, technically, that's not what this country's Constitution has written on it; but, perhaps I'm an idealist and would like to think that, in the hearts and minds of the founders, they were intending to create a confederacy of freedom, and of equal opportunity. Why would the bar for entry into the country be any different? [edit: finished my thought, then changed wording slightly]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nabaraj 15y agoThey should have gave to those who were selected despite of non-random. Cmon they must be freaking depressed now!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- alvarosm 15y agoMore importantly, for how many years has the selection process not been "truly random"? if it was really fucked up it could even mean some people could never be selected given their name and DoB.
- inrev 15y agoBTW, if you win, you have to pay the Diversity Visa Lottery fee $440/person
- kooshball 15y agoIf that's true, it would be a small price to pay for a green card.
- raymondh 15y agoMy bet is that the problem was much worse and more subtle than the other commenter's have noted. They posit a slight imbalance to due to rounding or PRNG characteristics. I suspect that is it like the problem of choosing values randomly from a sparse hash table. Choosing a random slot and scanning forward to the next empty slot results in a bias where closely spaced entries have a much lower chance of selection than entries preceded by a wider gap. It is easy to make that same mistake when trying to pick a random record number when record numbers have been assigned in chunks (like social security numbers).
- etureiab 15y agoI was one of those picked and am really pissed. This is so screwed up! Does your employer ask you to pay the extra monthly salary back when they made a mistake in their system? "NO!". They should have made the exception to re-draw "randomly(!)" among the non winners and give them another chance. But do not take away what you promised because of your inaptitude!