&gt; Originally, I thought of this idea as applied to college admissions. Harvard likes to talk about how it could assemble a few sets of qualified students each year, and has to choose one. At that point, it&#x27;s distinctly not obvious that the process they use to choose between similarly qualified candidates is any good; some actual randomness could have some benefits.<p>The only problem is that there&#x27;s no sign that elite universities have any intention of choosing students on merit, or through any system which is blind to factors other than merit (plus pure chance). Harvard&#x27;s selection system seems to be very good at its actual intended purpose: it&#x27;s more like casting <i>Glee</i> than making a strict assessment of merit. But for the rare university which both has a large oversupply of very good applicants and actually wishes to operate admissions on merit then yes, randomness is the answer.<p>Another place that it would seem to make sense to apply randomness is in performance-related pay.