In this episode, the fourth episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we dig into two stories about the intersection of political geography and mathematics. The first story comes from Ranthony Clark and is about her work with the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group around identifying communities of interest, with a focus on her in Ohio alongside Care Ohio, the Ohio organizing collaborative, the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, and the Kerwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State. The second story is about polling sites in cities, and the places in those cities that may not be covered as well as they should be. We hear from Mason Porter and Jiajie (Jerry) Luo, two members of the team, about how they used topological data analysis to find these holes in coverage.

Find our transcript here: Google Doc or .txt file

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Ranthony Clark

MGGG

Districtr

Mason Porter

Jiajie (Jerry) Luo

Persistent Homology for Resource Coverage: A Case Study of Access to Polling Sites Authors: Abigail Hickok, Benjamin Jarman, Michael Johnson, Jiajie Luo, Mason A. Porter

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348