Geometry, inference, complexity, and democracy

DOI10.1090/BULL/1708zbMATH Open1457.91169arXiv2006.10879OpenAlexW3095683947MaRDI QIDQ5146571FDOQ5146571

Authors: Jordan S. Ellenberg 

Publication date: 26 January 2021

Published in: Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Decisions about how the population of the United States should be divided into legislative districts have powerful and not fully understood effects on the outcomes of elections. The problem of understanding what we might mean by "fair districting" intertwines mathematical, political, and legal reasoning; but only in recent years has the academic mathematical community gotten directly involved in the process. I'll report on recent progress in this area, how newly developed mathematical tools have affected real political decisions, and what remains to be done. This survey represents the content of a lecture presented by the author in the Current Events Bulletin session of the Joint Mathematics Meetings in January 2020.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.10879

Recommendations

• Political geometry. Rethinking redistricting in the US with math, law, and everything in between
• Axiomatic districting
• A discrete districting plan
• Don't let the lawyers do the math: Some problems of legislative districting in the UK and the USA
• Fair redistricting is hard

zbMATH Keywords

gerrymanderingdemocracypolitical decisionsfair districting

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History, political science (91F10) Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to game theory, economics, and finance (91-02) Voting theory (91B12)

Cites Work

• Assessing significance in a Markov chain without mixing
• Expansion of product replacement graphs
• A formula goes to court: partisan gerrymandering and the efficiency gap
• Rotor-routing and spanning trees on planar graphs
• The Bernardi Process and Torsor Structures on Spanning Trees
• Measuring political gerrymandering

Cited In (5)

• Geometry in the courtroom
• Political geometry. Rethinking redistricting in the US with math, law, and everything in between
• Three applications of entropy to gerrymandering
• ELECTORAL MALDISTRICTING
• Mathematics, word problems, common sense, and artificial intelligence

This page was built for publication: Geometry, inference, complexity, and democracy

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q5146571)