On 6/22/2015 2:45 PM, John Levine wrote:
In particular, I see no reason to highlight the US Debt vs. that of
other countries or regions other than as a political statement.
The US debt has many digits, and is published regularly by an agency
with a tradition of not fudging the data. It's a perfectly reasonable
source of randomness.
Why do you feel that's true?
There could easily be an artifact in how it's calculated that biases
certain values or increments, which could affect the numbers posted.
It's a large number because the US is a large rich country.
It's 18E12 USD, which is 14th on a per-capita basis.
I suppose the Japanese debt might be a usable substitute for next
time, since it's also a large rich country with a large debt.
FWIW, Japan is #6 in the total debt on a per-country basis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
I see no good reason to use debt values other than as a political statement.
The IETF and ISOC make far too many of these, IMO. This is a case where
there's good reason to do otherwise.
Lotteries are sufficient and prevalent.
Joe