At random

At random

Today’s episode is already a little long, so I’ll try to be quick with today’s expression. The expression is “at random.” You do something at random when you do it without any system or without any strategy or any bias. Uncle Jerry Jacobson couldn’t just give the winning tickets to his friends and family—much less keep them for himself—so he had to find people at random. That means he had to find people all over the place, people not associated with him, so that nobody would suspect him. He had to pick people at random. McDonald’s, for its part, had a system that selected restaurants at random to receive winning tickets. Too bad the tickets never made it there—but at least they had a system for picking winning restaurants at random—meaning, a computer picked them without any bias or intention.

If you’ve ever been to a raffle, where they pick a winner’s name out of a hat, you hope they pick names at random: everyone should have an equal chance of having his or her name drawn from the hat. Sometimes I think they’re not picked at random, since I never win!

Athletes are often selected at random to be drug tested in major sports. That means that the sports leagues will select athletes at random—through an unbiased system—to select only some athletes to be drug tested. Tennis star Serena Williams thinks the drug tests are not at random, since she is selected for testing more than any other athlete.

Thanks again for being with us today. JR is the producer, like I said before I’m Jeff. And we are both very, very happy to have each and every one of you along with us on Mondays and Thursdays. 75 episodes are officially in the books now and this program has become a big part of our lives. We both love hearing from people around the world who are listening, all for their own individual reasons. So don’t be shy about saying hello. JR is [email protected] and I’m [email protected]. Stay in touch, and we’ll be back on Monday with a new episode.