Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day January 1970 an article appears in the New York Times with the headline

statisticians charged draft lottery was not random. The article laid out how an analysis of the Vietnam War draft lottery

which was intended to be a random drawing according to birth date,

well that drawing disproportionately picked for instance men born in January over men born in December.

Obviously the consequences of this, the implications of this were huge.

It tapped into a big conversation about the draft itself, those who were in the sample to be

drawn in that lottery and those who had avoided it and also in interesting ways this

was a big moment for statisticians. We got an email from a listener Thomas

about this and Thomas wrote us. I'm quoting here.

I'm not sure if you've done something on the Vietnam draft, but this is a rather minor, nerdy, and esoteric event that could provide a hook into the fairness of the draft and Thomas I'll just say you get the show with an email like that

When someone writes us and says this is a rather minor and Hello Jody. And Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley is on break today. She's not joining us but as it happens we had lined up a great guest for this so sliding seamlessly into that third seat is none other than Walticky my former colleague at 538 a lover of all the ways in which stats and culture and the real world intersect.

So Walt thank you for doing this and I guess just by the end of the calendar you're our first guest for 2024.

Hey there we go.

Thank you for having me.

You know I dig the show so much.

I'm so happy to be back.

Yeah and you know the last time you were on the show was for your book which you wrote

last year called You Are What You Watch and people should go check that out and that was about pop

culture and culture and stats and how data helps us understand culture.

This is a story about how

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