Draft Lottery Odds

[Alden Brosseau]

Innumeracy lives, on this list, as in many other places.
Snoopy wrote:
>If you go by the odds for the draft lottery, Boston will most likely get
>the 4th pick.
>The odds are:>
>1st -  19.9%
>2nd -  18.8%
>3rd -  17.1%
>4th -  31.9%
>5th -  12.4%>
>So the odds of getting the 1st or 2nd pick is just 38.7%
>Let me see if I understand this...Boston has the 2nd worst record in
>the League and that supposedly gives the C's a 19.9% chance to get
>the First pick, and a 31.9% chance of getting the Fourth pick.
>Talk about bad odds.  If I'd known it was THIS bad, I'd have begged
>someone to file a lawsuit to stop the Draft Lottery.

Finishing 2nd worst DOES give us better odds. If all 14 lottery teams were 
treated equally, our odds would be 7.1% for 1st, 7.1% for 2nd, 7.1% for 3rd, 
7.1% for 4th, 7.1% for 5th, and 64.3% for 6th through 14th. As it is, we 
have 0% chance of lower than 5th.

Alden