Canada using Excel function for immigration lottery (opens in new tab)

So much this. In order to 'attack' this, how would you go about that? Somehow control who applies for the program so you wind up with an expected number?

And the gambling comparison is particularly bad. Excel is presumably not picking the same seed every day, no matter how bad it is. It's probably using time() when it's loaded, which is not great but also not visible to an 'attacker' and not consistent.

Yeah, the human component is definitely a lot easier to attack. I'm curious how this is handled. Does the person doing the random number generation have anyone else standing over their shoulder at the time? There should definitely be witnesses and/or records of something this important.

And according to the article, I notice they said that only 10k make it past the lottery stage to the vetting stage. That seems like a pretty easy anti-immigration attack surface: just submit a lot of low quality requests to block out potential acceptances.

You’re right that it seems unlikely an individual could exploit this, and it’s silly for the article to emphasize that threat.

However: “it may be that not everybody has exactly the same chance” — this might still be a concern.

Whether it really is depends on how large N is, what version of Excel they’re using, and how often they re-run the lottery.

If they were actually accepting all applications that meet the criteria, that would make first come first serve more fair, but there are quotas so they have to reject N-1 applications regardless of their application.

Lottery systems are generally considered fairer than first come first serve because they don't advantage people who apply early. Especially in an immigration-related process where circumstances are likely to dictate when you can apply, not everyone will have an opportunity to 'get in early'.

If you have a way to make the process simultaneously non-random, fair, and not have a cap (which I personally would probably be fine with eliminating but is presumably a non-starter for various political reasons), I'm sure some people would love to hear about it.

Why is that wrong? How do you propose to select to pick who gets in and who doesn’t?

The other options are to let everybody in or to suppose you already know the right criteria for who'd be the "best" immigrants. Hint: you don't.

Genuinely random selection averts loads of really nasty problems in a system where you need to pick things even though humans tend to be sure some other approach would work better.

I would imagine it's because there are a limited number of people that Canadians will allow to immigrate into their county?

While it does seem wrong and silly, isn't a completely random lottery explicitly fair? No one involved is privileged by any metric (unless you believe in supernatural luck).

Unfair to whom? That is going to be relative.

Its still better than using the place of birth as a determining factor.

"The Liberals introduced a lottery in 2017 in an effort to make the system fairer – previously, applications were accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. The program receives roughly 100,000 applications each year and selects 10,000"

I used to use Excel's RNG to determine random winners for various drawings at work, including such momentous things as shift bid winners when there were more otherwise equally positioned people than available slots for a specific shift.

Excel is far and away the best product Microsoft has ever produced, and definitely one of the top five applications ever developed by anyone. It's one of the most useful and flexible tools for all kinds of practical analysis involving just about anything mathematical. Another example is that handful of us once used it, quite successfully, to manage a particular $500MM book of business for a very large insurance company.

In fact, the only people I've met who really hate Excel are developers who find they're not as necessary as they wish they were because regular managers are able to figure things out and make reasonably good decisions without their help or input because they have a good grasp of Excel.

Random selection is literally equal opportunity.