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<p>It’s the randomness in outcomes that is under discussion. Saying that a random American and random Syrian have different likelihoods of certain problems arising in the marriage does not mean that the husband is chosen by lottery, but that the chances of such problems are correlated with husband’s nationality. </p>
<p><a href=“jym:”>quote</a>you are both right. From the Webster’s dictionary:
2. Statistics. of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen
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<p>That is one particular usage in English, but it is not the standard usage of the term “random” as it concerns statistics or probability.</p>