Originally Posted by
richarddd
The odds that you would be randomly selected six times in a row are likely extremely low. The odds that someone would be selected six times in a row are much higher.
Consider 64 people tossing a fair coin. The odds that any random person would get six heads or tails in a row are rather low. One person out of the 64 getting six in a row isn't evidence against this, because the odds that one person from the group would get six in a row are very high.
Critical to your analysis is that the coin is fair. While generally I think for most things like this governmental agencies are truthful, we don't really have proof other than a simple press release that it's random. If they published what percentage of inbound travellers were randomly selected, then it would be possible to calculate the probability range that I'd be selected on any trip. So for example, if the percentage of people getting randomly selected was 15 or 20 percent, then high likelihood its random as we're told, I'm just unlucky as it's a pain. If it's 1 percent, that's a different matter. I'm glad to save the hassle of the testing anyway, since it really doesn't matter much any more, but I'd prefer to save both taxpayer dollars and time by not bothering with random testing at all on arrival and instead simply advise people who later get symptoms after international travel they can get a PCR test from their local health care unit which can then be used to trace for variants, as has been suggested as the purpose of continuing this at all.