1. What went wrong with the draft lottery? George W. Divine H. James Norton Website: www.jimnortonphd.comwww.jimnortonphd.com

2. What went wrong with Executive Order No. 11497, signed by President of the United States, 26 November 1969? “The Director of the Selective Service shall establish a random selection sequence for induction. … The first sequence shall determine the order of selection of registrants (other than delinquents or volunteers). … A random sequence number established for a registrant shall be equivalent, for purposes of selection, to the same random sequence number established for other registrants in other drawings.”

3. The order of selection was determined by the man’s birthday. The lottery was held during the Vietnam war. To be eligible to be drafted, a person had to be male, of a certain age range (men born between 1944 and 1950), and deemed to be physically and mentally fit. Certain men were given deferments if they requested and met certain conditions. Examples of deferments that could be granted included family hardship, religious objections, attending college, married, or for certain occupations. Slips of paper numbered from 1 to 366 were placed into capsules. The numbers represented the 366 days of the year (including February 29). A televised lottery was conducted on December 1, 1969. If the first capsule selected contained the number 1, then men eligible to be drafted into the US armed forces born on January 1 would be the first drafted. If the first capsule selected contained the number 366, then men eligible to be drafted into the US armed forces born on December 31 would be the first drafted. The following links contain the results for the lotteries from 1969 to 1972: The links gives the data set in tab-separated text format and comma-separated text format. These are standard formats that can be imported into most statistical and spreadsheet software. www.math.uah.edu/stat/data/Draft.txt www.math.uah.edu/stat/data/Draft.csv

4. Drawing the first number for the Draft Lottery December 1, 1969

5. Month001-122123-244245-366 Jan91210 Feb71210 Mar51016 Apr8814 May9715 Jun11712 Jul127 Aug13711 Sep10155 Oct9157 Nov12 6 Dec17104 Lottery Numbers By thirds* & by months Prior to the lottery, it was thought that men with lottery numbers 1-122 would be drafted, numbers 123-244 might be drafted, and 245-366 would not be drafted.

6. r = -.226 p < 0.001

7. Kruskal-Wallis test p = 0.007

8. Comparing lottery numbers from January - June vs. July – December 1-122123-366 Jan - June49 (26.9%)133 (73.1%) July - Dec73 (39.7%)111 (60.3%) chi-square = 6.69, p= 0.0097

9. The sequence of birthdates chosen by the lottery does not seem random. There are a number of stories and conjectures concerning the apparent lack of random draw. Despite protests, the order of men to be drafted was determined by the sequence chosen in the lottery of December 1, 1969.

10. The next year (1970), The National Bureau of Standards was asked to devise the method for determining the sequence the random sequence of birthdays. The results of this drawing are also available on the links provided on an earlier slide and students could compare the results between the 1969 lottery and the 1970 lottery.

11. From: Statistics Concepts and Controversies by David Moore