Python is an Equal Opportunity Programming Language

Random832 random832 at fastmail.com
Sat May 7 23:40:58 EDT 2016


On Sat, May 7, 2016, at 22:43, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > If not for the quotas, a citizen of some other country would have an
> > equal chance to get a green card as a citizen of India or China. 
> 
> If you have a big hat with 5,000,000 tickets marked "Indian", and 500
> tickets marked "Finish", and you stick your hand in the hat and rummage
> around and pick a random ticket, do you really think that you have an
> equal
> chance of selecting an Indian ticket and a Finish ticket?

But that's not what it is. You would have, say, 1,000 tickets labeled
"green card" and 100,000 tickets labeled "no green card", and  (say)
12,000 Indian people and 50 Finnish people each get their turn drawing
from that same bucket. In your version, the Finnish people draw from a
bucket with 500 green card tickets and no "no green card" cards, and the
Indian people draw from a bucket with 500 green card tickets and 11,500
"no green card" tickets.



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