In December of 1969, the Selective Service held a lottery to determine the order in which young men would be called up for the Draft. My number was a low 53, and that set the course for much of my adult life. Turns out, the odds were against me.
- A nice description of what happened. More details available on Wikipedia.
- More details that you ever wanted to know.
- Was the 1970 lottery truly random? Some clever statistician at the College of the Redwoods shows a simple analysis with R that suggests men born in December (like me) got shafted.
- Want to run more analyses? This article from the Journal of Statistics Education shows the way.
The Random Texan 
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