Reply to PK4 wait list math

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[quote=Anonymous]In terms of the math I think you need to break down the problem. Here is my train of thought:

What was the probability of getting into the set of schools in the last 2-3 years?
This should be further broken down into:
- What was the probability of getting into any one of the schools in the last 2-3 years? You said 5/6 = 83% got to your # on the waitlist. 
- But we need to lower this estimate as we know that in bound students that lottery after waitlist day and siblings of out-of-bound students who got in for other grades are added before you. I have no good estimate of how many people are added (you might be able to estimate based on your movement on the waitlists i.e. how often did your number go up). So let's lower this to 60%.
- Then we know that your kid is on multiple waitlists, should this improve their probability? If the events were independent it should improve the probability considerably (60% to (100% - 40%^6) = 99%)! But most likely the probability is much closer to fully dependent than independent. For two reasons. 1) many people lotterying out of bounds are going to have the same schools on their list (e.g. JR feeders), 2) general environmental conditions are likely shared by all the schools since the neighborhood have a similar composition (e.g., people moving in or out of the neighborhoods). So I would keep the probability closer to 60% than 99%.

How does this years conditions affect the probability? That is, is this year fundamentally different from the last 2-3 years?
- I don't think anyone knows this or has good estimate for this. People may be more likely to leave. More likely to stay. More likely to choose public over private. So we aren't even sure about how it would change the direction of the probability.
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