A new research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities follows one community choir's raffle tin across eleven draws, and the University now requires a timed and minuted ten-second shake of every draw it runs.
A case study of one choir's raffle tin sets a timed, countersigned shake for every ballot and allocation by lot the University runs
The University has settled how long a draw must be shaken, and who must write it down. Ten Seconds, Minuted, a new research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities, follows a single suburban community choir through eleven end-of-year raffles, each drawn by hand from one tin of folded tickets after the ten-second shake its constitution asks for.
The poster records where in the sale order each winning ticket sat, and reports that the tickets sold last were drawn far more often than their number would suggest. From the sixth draw the choir timed the shake on a kitchen timer and entered it in the minutes; the record improved, and the pattern of winners did not. The School presents the case for use in committee-practice teaching.
The choir did everything its constitution asked of it. We were struck by how much of that could be read back afterwards.
— Dr Petra Umbile, Postdoctoral Fellow
The University has taken the ten-second minuted shake as the standard for every ballot, raffle and allocation by lot it runs, to be timed, minuted and countersigned at each draw. Dr Marek Solheim, Lecturer and Deputy Convenor of the Horizon Register, said the Register was glad to hold a standard that could be checked from the minute alone, and that a deeper tin would be considered in the ordinary course.
The work reflects the School’s continuing regard for the small procedures on which a community’s trust in its own draws rests, and the University is proud to carry one of them into its own halls. The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.9s9wmg.