Thank you, Forrest. It's been a decade since Real Analysis, and the name, apparently, lingered longer than it's meaning.
-----Original Message----- From: Forest Simmons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 7:52 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: RE: [EM] WSJ Gerrymander story Compactness means closed and bounded. All districts on planet earth are bounded. They can be closed iff nobody lives precisely on the boundary, so that boundary points can be in more than one neighboring district. In other words, compactness (insofar as it is feasible) doesn't stop Gerrymandering. Perhaps you meant "compactness" in some non-technical sense. We could require minimization (over all districts) of the maximum diameter, for example. Forest On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Narins, Josh wrote: > A more reasonable measure might be, rather than convexity, compactness. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Forest Simmons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 7:12 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [EM] WSJ Gerrymander story > > > One solution would be to require all districts to be as convex as possible > while respecting state boundaries. > > This brings up the question of how do we measure deviation from convexity? > > It could be the difference in the area of the convex hull of the region > and the area of the region, or it could be the difference in the number of > voters in the convex hull of the region and the number of voters in the > region itself. Of course, there are other measures of deviation, too. > > Forest > > On Sun, 17 Mar 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > D- A story from reality land---- > > ------- > > > > Wall Street Journal > > > > JOHN FUND'S POLITICAL DIARY > > > > Red-Light District > > > > It's time to draw the line on gerrymandering. > > <big snip> > > > Two hundred fifteen years later, incumbents are using high-powered > > computers to create lifetime sinecures for themselves. That kind of > > privilege and protection is certainly not what the Founding Fathers had > > in mind when they overthrew a monarchy to form a republic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipient(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. This communication is for information purposes only and should not be regarded as an offer to sell or as a solicitation of an offer to buy any financial product, an official confirmation of any transaction, or as an official statement of Lehman Brothers. Email transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free. Therefore, we do not represent that this information is complete or accurate and it should not be relied upon as such. All information is subject to change without notice.
