San Diego Chapter of the ASA
Fifth Statistical Careers Day
San Diego State University
April 17, 2004




Don Ylvisaker

is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford in 1960, then taught at Columbia, New York University and the University of Washington prior to his time at UCLA.
His early research was more theoretical - design of experiments, robustness, probability and the like - as was common at that time; his later work has been more applied. Aside from occasional teaching and sporadic research, he serves on an NRC panel on the 2010 census, and consults with lotteries, law firms and various corporate entities.

Abstract of talk: "Statistics and the Lottery Industry"
Lotteries have a long history in this country, but the modern age dates to 1964 in New Hampshire. By now there are lotteries operating in 38 states and the District of Columbia, California has had one since 1985. Statistics enters the picture in a variety of ways: the running of official "random" draws, the bulk selling of "randomly" chosen tickets, security issues, sales projections, demographics of players, placement of player terminals, idiosyncrasies of player behavior, amongst others. The talk is a non-technical, anecdotal tour of what a statistician does for a lottery, though mention is made of simulations, of data mining, and more.