During my college years, there was one particularly rigorous course that was almost universally dreaded: statistics. Whenever possible, students avoided this course. Thankfully, though, there were high-achiever individuals who embraced the challenge, who gravitated to numbers and were especially fascinated by statistics. These individuals often graduated and became statisticians.
There is one such person working for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIF&W): Mark Ostermann. Mark is a computer analyst and is responsible for the computer programming systems that ultimately decide whether or not you draw a moose permit in the annual moose lottery.
Like any lottery, there are winners and losers, always more losers than winners. And in the moose lottery, those who have been on a losing streak for 20 years begin to harbor suspicions that there must be something unfair or idiosyncratic with the MDIF&W computer program. These suspicions become heightened when a continually unsuccessful moose lottery applicant sees a husband, a wife and a son all draw a moose permit in one year! With this in mind, I decided to have a chat with Mark Ostermann. I wanted to know. How does the lottery system work? How does a preference point get in the drawing system? How random is the computer program itself?
My talk with Ostermann was interesting and informative. If you have often wondered about how the moose lottery works, you may find the process as interesting as I did. What follows is Ostermann’s overview of the moose lottery process:
Purchased Chances:
Residents can buy 1, 3, 6 chances
Non-Residents can buy 1, 3, 6 or unlimited number of chances in blocks of ten.
Preference Points for Applying:
For each year a person applies but doesn’t win, they will receive another chance. Points are lost if a person fails to apply or if they win a permit. A person may not apply for two years after they have won.
How the Lottery Program Works:
The lottery program reads an application and then draws a random number for each purchased chance and each preference point, the lowest random number drawn is assigned to the application. After every application has a random number, the applications are sorted and the applications with the lowest numbers are used to assign permits. The assignment of permits is based upon the WMD Season and willingness to take an Antlerless permit. The first permit available that meets the applications requirements is assigned to the application. If no available permits meet the requirements the next application with the next higher random number is matched up with the available permits.
The resident applications are assigned permits from the available resident permits; the non-resident applications get permits from a separate list of non-resident permits.
What it all means:
The likelihood of winning is small. With 49,792 applications for only 3,140 permits, the overall odds are 1:16 So if the universe were “fair” and the moose permits were allocated by a one-time waiting list, it would take 16 years before everyone could expect to win. In reality, the universe is not fair, and some people will be drawn several times and others will not be drawn during their lifetime. It is a lottery.
The preference points, the purchased chances, the applications requirements-(WMDs, Season, Cow/Bull) will effect the actual odds of a application winning. If an application will accept any available permit, the odds of a single pulled random number being a winner:
Resident chances : 1:95
Non-resident chances : 1:481
The odds of a resident 2010 : (purchased chances) + (preference points)/ 95
The odds of a non-resident 2010: (purchased chances) + (preference points)/ 481
Again, because the program is random, even if a non-resident purchased 800 chances, there is no guarantee that they would have won, but they are significantly more likely to win than the person who only bought one chance.
For those applicants irked about seeing one family win two moose permits, Ostermasn explains that there is a statistical certainty that this will happen year after year. Thirty percent of all the resident applications share the same address with another application, and, since 7.6 percent of the applications win, each year 65 households will win at least two permits.
Bottom line, the moose lottery is as fair as it can be statistically, but, like any game of chance, there are always going to be more losers than winners.
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The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal and has written his first book, A Maine Deer Hunter’s Logbook. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WCME-FM 96.7) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is paul@sportingjournal.com.
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