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  • Sean Carroll's Mindscape Jordan Ellenberg on the Mathematics of Political Boundaries (Season 1, Episode 151)
  • Podcast Episode | Talk-Show

Sean Carroll's Mindscape

Jordan Ellenberg on the Mathematics of Political Boundaries (Season 1, Episode 151)
Podcast Episode | Talk-Show
Any system in which politicians represent geographical districts with boundaries chosen by the politicians themselves is vulnerable to gerrymandering: carving up districts to increase the amount of seats that a given party is expected to ...See moreAny system in which politicians represent geographical districts with boundaries chosen by the politicians themselves is vulnerable to gerrymandering: carving up districts to increase the amount of seats that a given party is expected to win. But even fairly-drawn boundaries can end up quite complex, so how do we know that a given map is unfairly skewed? Math comes to the rescue. We can ask whether the likely outcome of a given map is very unusual within the set of all possible reasonable maps. That's a hard math problem, however - the set of all possible maps is pretty big - so we have to be clever to solve it. I talk with geometer Jordan Ellenberg about how ideas like random walks and Markov chains help us judge the fairness of political boundaries. See less
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Status
Edit Released
Updated Jun 14, 2021
Release date
Jun 14, 2021 (United States)

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2 cast members
Name Known for
Sean Carroll primary photo
Sean Carroll
Self - Host Self - Host   See fewer
Earth to Echo (2014)
Jordan Ellenberg primary photo
Jordan Ellenberg
Self - Guest Self - Guest   See fewer
Gifted (2017)
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