Mathematics Colloquia and Seminars

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In 1962, Justice Felix Frankfurter called gerrymandering a "political thicket" and a "mathematical quagmire". Nearly 60 years later, math has shown some, but not much, light on this dismal practice that poisons our democracy. Impossibly difficult questions in graph theory, data analysis, and stochastic processes collide every year in courts around the country with law, politics, geography, and social justice. What pieces of the gerrymandering puzzle do mathematicians hold, and how do we communicate these ideas to the public and the courts? In this talk, we will walk through some history behind the mathematics of political districts, and look at some recent advances in the theory and law of detecting -- and slaying -- the Gerrymander.