Activity: Draft Lottery

• CBS News Report:

https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=-p5X1FjyD_g

• 366 capsules, each corresponding to a unique (1952) birthdate, were successively drawn from a container. The first date drawn, September 14, was assigned rank 1. This process was repeated until all of the capsules were chosen.

Utah State 2024

1

1970 Draft Lottery

• Draft numbers (1-366) were assigned to birthdates in the 1970 draft lottery

​

• Find your draft number
• Any 316s?

​

Utah State 2024

2

1970 Draft Lottery

Utah State 2024

3

month median

January 211.0

February 210.0

March 256.0

April 225.0

May 226.0

June 207.5

​

month median

July 188.0

August 145.0

September 168.0

October 201.0

November 131.5

December 100.0

Draft Lottery

4

Utah State 2024

Draft Lottery

5

Utah State 2024

1970 Draft Lottery

r = -.226

Utah State 2024

6

Procedure

​

​

​

• The capsules were put in the container month by month (Jan thru Dec), leading to the possibility of an ordering in the capsules being chosen related to birth month.

Utah State 2024

7

1971

• r = .014

Utah State 2024

8

Morals: Statistics matters!

• Summaries can illuminate
• Random selection can be difficult

Utah State 2024

9

Morals

• Students can discover and tell you properties of correlation coefficient
• Use technology to focus students on these properties rather than the calculation
• Students can approximate r pretty well from graph

Utah State 2024

10