Lottery

To the Editors of The Crimson:

It is disconcerting to find a blatant misuse of numerical data by the Housing Department at a college with a Quantitative Reasoning Requirement.

It has been claimed by this department that 80 percent of the current sophomores last year got their first choice house. Sounds wonderfully promising, doesn't it?

That is until you reflect that a majority of the students participating in the housing lottery did not in fact put down their true first choice. Rather, the first choices reflected what the students would be most satisfied with, considering a moderately high to low lottery number and the probability of their true first choice house being filled in the first round. Helen Gould '90   Elaine Demopoulos '90