Raouf and Sathé[1] give a computer program for evaluating whether or not a sequence of observations can be considered random, using the number of runs and the sample median as a reference point. In this paper, the basic runs test is reviewed and then it is shown to be useful in a wide variety of situations. The number of runs can be usedto detect patterns in production,to examine regression models for underfitting or misfitting,to look for serial correlation in time series or trend analysis,to evaluate discriminant analysis functions with qualitative or other non-normal preditor variables, and for many other purposes.