Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Monday 21 august 2017

Math experts join brainpower to help address gerrymandering

legal challenges, but the mandering, and legal ex-
Supreme Court will revisit perts say the swarm of new
the topic this year in a Wis- data tools could reshape
consin lawsuit that experts how cases are decided.
say could be a landmark “Traditional redistricting
case. Mathematicians disputes have sort of a he-
hope to help by offering said, she-said aspect to
new measurements to eval- them,” said Michael Li, se-
uate whether a district has nior redistricting counsel at
been drawn unfairly. Until the Brennan Center for Jus-
recently many courts have tice at New York University.
relied on relatively unscien- “Statistical tests and data-
tific methods, experts say, driven tests can be really
often using the so-called helpful to courts in ascer-
“eyeball test” to see if a dis- taining when a map goes
trict’s shape looks reason- too far, when something
ably compact and regular. is statistically unlikely to be
By contrast, researchers at randomly reproduced.”
the University of Illinois at At the college workshops,
Urbana-Champaign have Duchin is trying to spark
recently created a super- conversations that could
computer algorithm that lead to even more tests
can compare a district to and to sort out which are
In this Monday, Aug. 7, 2017 photo, mathematics professor Moon Duchin speaks to attendees millions of hypothetical al- best. She’s also bringing in
during a conference at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. ternatives to determine lawyers to train mathemati-
(Associated Press) whether the original map cians how to testify as ex-
By COLLIN BINKLEY Among those working to Gerrymandering isn’t new, is a statistical outlier, which pert witnesses in gerryman-
Associated Press bridge the classroom and and it isn’t always illegal. can offer evidence of bias. dering lawsuits so they can
MEDFORD, Mass. (AP) — the courtroom is Moon States are given wide lati- Teams at the University of apply and defend the tests.
Some of the brightest minds Duchin, a math professor at tude to draw their own vot- Michigan and Duke Univer- Legal teams have already
in math arrived at Tufts Uni- Tufts who orchestrated the ing districts, and since at sity have developed similar contacted Duchin request-
versity last week to tackle gathering at her Boston-ar- least the 1800s politicians algorithms. Other quanti- ing expert witnesses right
an issue lawyers and po- ea campus. The workshop have sought to cement tative methods that have away, she said, and de-
litical scientists have been was the first in a series be- their power by creating gained traction include mand is expected to surge
struggling with for decades. ing organized at campuses districts in which certain the “efficiency gap” for- after new congressional
They came from colleges nationwide to unite aca- voting groups are spread mula, which measures to districts are drawn follow-
across the country for a demics and to harness cut- thinly over many districts what extent a political par- ing the 2020 census.
weeklong conference on ting-edge mathematics to or clumped heavily into ty benefited from district “We expect there to be an
gerrymandering, the prac- address gerrymandering. only a few. Either way, it di- boundaries in a particular unprecedented amount
tice of crafting voting dis- “Mathematicians are com- lutes their power. Drawing election. Duchin at Tufts is of litigation after the 2020
tricts in a way that favors ing late to this problem,” districts along racial lines working on her own “cur- census, and we want there
voters from a certain politi- said Duchin, who started has been ruled unconsti- vature” metric that com- to be witnesses available
cal party or demographic. studying the shapes of elec- tutional, as in North Caro- bines two major measures around the country,” she
It’s a topic of growing inter- toral districts after teaching lina, where a federal court of compactness. said. Her group’s next work-
est among many math and a course on voting during struck down 28 districts last Some of the updated ap- shops will be hosted at col-
data experts who say their the presidential primary last year because state Repub- proaches helped convince leges in North Carolina,
scholarly fields can provide year. “We think we can see licans relied too heavily on a federal court in Wiscon- Wisconsin, Texas and Cali-
new tools to help courts underlying mathematical race when drawing them. sin last year that the state’s fornia, all states that have
identify voting maps that principles that weren’t vis- Gerrymandering along voting districts amounted faced allegations of some
are drawn unfairly. ible before.” partisan lines has survived to illegal partisan gerry- type of gerrymandering. q