Pre-Class Assignments
Math 217, Mathematics, Voting, & Democracy, Spring 2022
This page uses MathJax to display mathematical notation, so please let me know if any part isn't
clear.
Be sure to check back, because this page will be updated often during the semester.
Some of the main references for the course are:
- Balinski & Young, Fair Representation, Second Edition, Brookings Institution Press
- Saari, Chaotic Elections! A Mathematician Looks at Voting , American Mathematical Society
Week 2: For Tuesday February 1
To Read
- From Balinski & Young:
Chapter 1 Apportionment
Chapter 2 Representation in the United States
Chapter 3 The Methods of Jefferson and Hamilton
Chapter 4 The Method of Webster
Week 2: For Thursday February 3
To Read
- From Balinski & Young:
Chapter 5 Paradoxes
Week 3: For Tuesday February 8
To Read
- From Balinski & Young:
Chapter 6 The Controversy over Bias
Chapter 7 Overview of Methods
To Watch
- From the Census Bureau, The U.S. Census and the Amazing Apportionment Machine. This is actually Hill's Method. Really.
Week 3: For Thursday February 10
To Read
- From Balinski & Young:
Chapter 8 Resolving the Paradoxes
Week 4: For Thursday February 17
To Read
- Everything you wanted to know about redistricting but were afraid to ask from the ACLU (2010)
Sections II - V (pp 8 - 21)
Section VII (pg 27) - Drawing the Line, How redistricting turned America from blue to red at The New Yorker (2016)
- Power on the Line(s) from LDF, MALDEF, and AAJC (2021)
Chapters 1 & 2 (pp 4 - 27)
Appendix 1 may be a handy reference, too
Week 5: For Tuesday February 22
To Read
- Skim The Gerrymandering Jumble: Map Projections Permute Districts’ Compactness Scores by Bar-Natan, et al. Pay attention to the statements of Theorems 1, 2, & 3, and to Section 7 Discussion.
- Rucho v. Common Cause at the Brennan Center
- Gill v. Whitford at the Brennan Center
- The Mathematicians' Brief in Rucho v. Common Cause. This short webpage has the most important ideas, although you can also download the full brief if you would like.
Week 5: For Thursday February 24
To Read
- A Formula Goes to Court: Partisan Gerrymandering and the Efficiency Gap by Mira Bernstein and Moon Duchin
To Watch
- Moon Duchin's Public Math Lecture at Stanford, from May 2019. Note this is from before the Supreme Court ruling in June 2019.
Week 6: For Thursday March 3
To Read
- Skim The Geography and Election Outcome (GEO) Metric: An Introduction by Campisi, et al.
Week 7: For Thursday March 10
To Read
- Colorado in Context: Congressional Redistricting and Competing Fairness Criteria in Colorado
by Clelland, et al.
Read Sections 1 & 2 in detail, and skim the remainder of the paper
Week 8: For Tuesday March 22
To Read
- How does the German general election work? from Deutsche Welle
- Election of Members of the German Bundestag from the German Bundestag
Week 9: For Tuesday March 29
To Read
- Saari
Preface (pp ix-xiii)
Sections 1.2.1 & 1.2.2 (pp 17-27)
Section 2.2 (pp 40-45)
Week 9: For Thursday March 31
To Read
- Saari
Sections 2.2 & 2.3 (pp 40-52)
Week 10: For Tuesday April 5
To Read
- Saari
Section 5.3 (pp 129-135)
Week 10: For Thursday April 7
To Read
- Saari
Re-read Section 5.3 (pp 129-135)
Week 12: For Tuesday April 19
To Read
- Saari
Section 2.5 (pp 60-68)
Section 1.2.3 (pp 27-31)
Week 13: For Tuesday April 26
To Read
- "Selecting Committees," by T. Ratliff, Public Choice (2006), posted to onCourse
- "Is racism a public health crisis? Lowell’s mostly white City Council says no", Boston Globe, July 20, 2020, posted to onCourse
- Skim Huot v Lowell Consent Decree