Randomization Failure 1969 Vietnam Draft Lottery
Task Process Resources Evaluation Conclusion Objectives
			Introduction During the early part of the Vietnam war, males could be exempt from serving in the military by attending college. Eventually this was ruled unfair as people who couldn't afford college had no chance at exemption, so this practice was eliminated. In 1969 the Draft Board designed a lottery to decide the order in which one was drafted. They decided to draft people by randomly selecting people by their birth dates. Some noticed that those people with low numbers tended to be people born in the latter months of the year. The lottery was challenged in court as being unfair.
Task It is 1970 and you have just passed the bar and work for a major law firm. Your firm has been retained in a class action lawsuit, against the United States Selective Service, that alleges the selection process of the 1969 draft was unfair. You have been asked by the senior partners of your firm to research these allegations. You have 2 days in which to prepare a presentation that will enable the senior partners to determine whether or not your firm will argue the case. As an aspiring partner in this firm, you decide you must put your own opinions regarding the draft and the war aside. If there was no wrongdoing, you do not want the firm to be embarrassed by taking an un-winnable case and looking like all the other anti-war protestors. Yet, you don’t want to appear to blindly support wrongdoing by the government (intentional or not) if it really does exist. You decide you need a sound approach to determine if this process was fair. You realize that some sort of valid statistical analysis is in order and are glad for all the statistics classes you took in college.
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			Process Before you can assume your role as an aspiring young lawyer of the 70s, you need to “get a feel” for the times. Use the links in the “60s & 70s” to summarize the events of the time with some focus on the war and the draft. Read about the background of the draft and find out how the draft lottery was performed. Would you have been drafted? Explain. From the Selective Service System website, find the draft numbers for all the birthdays of the year, make a scatterplot of the data. What do you observe? Calculate a regression equation, correlation coefficient, and coefficient of determination. What do you conclude? Separate the data by month. Look at side-by-side boxplots for the draft numbers by month. What do you observe? Should your firm argue this case? If yes, what could explain your results? If no, why do your clients feel they have been wronged and how will you explain to them that they haven’t? Use your analysis to create a brief for the senior partners that thoroughly explains your observations. Explain your position clearly without using technical jargon. Add a brief description of how the draft lottery has changed since 1969. Does this new method seem more fair? Explain.
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The 1960s & 1970s Celebrities and events in the 60s The Vietnam War An interview with a draft resister		The Draft The Selective Service System Background of Selective Service Are you ready to be drafted? The 1969 Draft Lottery					Vietnam War Vietnam Online Vietnam Wall The Virtual Wall The 192 AHC Home Page
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				Your grade will be based on the following: Summary of events (10) Description of 1969 Draft process/procedure (10) Graphical Displays of data and descriptions (25) Calculations and correct interpretations (25) Decision based on above analyses (10) Explanation of decision (10) Brief to senior partners (10)
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				Through this activity you have seen how failure to properly apply sound probability models can have such and impact on the lives of people and the country. Hopefully, in the future, you will give much deeper thought to the word “random”, so frequently used in a context which lacks the appropriate criteria to be truly random.
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Grade Level/Subject: AP/Adv. Statistics
Georgia Quality Core Curriculum (QCC) Objectives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 12
National Education Technology Standards (NETS): (all) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; (9–12) 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
In Memory of: Ret. MSG Charles M. Keith (10/11/1941 – 08/05/1997) And Dedicated to: All United States Armed Forces service personnel, including my father, who so valiantly, and unselfishly, served our country in times of conflict and to the wives and family members, including my mother, whose support was paramount in these endeavors.
Web Quest developed by Tammy M. Keith, East Paulding High School, January 2004
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