Does this PROVE “randomness”?
I was “randomly” selected to the same 160 person jury pool as an immediate member of my family.
Both of us were then, through further “randomness”, selected to the same 18 person jury. I told the Commissioner that I did not believe the selection process was reasonably random. He assured me that nothing like this had ever happened before. At which point, another member of the 18 person committee pointed to the woman next to him and said, “But this is my wife!”
“You see!” The Jury Commissioner triumphantly declared, “That *proves* that it’s random!”
My maths are a little rusty. Someone please explain…
Update:160 out of a possible 600,000 - 900,000, depending on how they combine registered voters and people with driver's licenses.
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"Worst" case scenario, 2 pairs of 2 in 18 jurors out of a possible 900,000 are very rare odds. 18 out of 900000 is .00002 and the odds decrease from there.
This sort of thing neither proves nor disproves randomness. If having 2 pairs of spouses in the jury pool is the less likely of occurrences, does this mean someone has a hand in it or does it show just how little of a hand anyone had in the selection?
Since it does not prove or disprove randomness, the commissioner's exclamation of proof might arouse suspicion.
Now I ask, does randomness exist? Given what we know about the problem, is the selection predictable on a macroscopic scale? What about partial randomness? Was a pseudo-number generator used?
I think this question of randomness is too important to be left to chance.
It looks to YOU like the selection is not random, because you are personally involved.
But if there are five juries a day (I am making that number up), times five weekdays a week, times 52 weeks a year, times say twenty years, don't you think sooner or later a person will be on the same jury as their family member? If you are not personally involved, this would seem pretty reasonable, right?
It really is random, even though it doesn't seem so.
Numbers are picked at random, without any conditions. It's possible that two sets of two people who know each other could randomly be chosen from the same pool.
Unlikely, yes, but possible and random.
Suppose there was an urn that had 100 balls in it. 98 were black, and 2 were white. It's possible for the two white ones to be pulled, right? There's a very small chance of that happening, but it is possible. That's the same situation you had.
18/160...that means each of you had a one in eleven chance of being selected to the 18 person jury... multiply the probablities... (1/11 x 1/11 = 1/121 chance of both of you being selected to same jury.....i think...{if i remember right} ha)
and the 160...who knows...depends on the method they use to choose people...
but still it's 160 outta whatever population you have in your city
if you wanna know the real chances of them choosing you two.
That is random If you flip a coin and it lands on head the next flip still has 50:50 chance to land up head. same with the jery each person had the same chance to get selected to the jery they just happend to be realted. that is odd but stitisticly it has to happen sometimes.
I would say that it is not at random, or somehow you guys have hit some pretty crazy odds.
No and its not the maths that matters here.