Because doing such classifications would be far too difficult. For example, we know some very, very rich people - - private-jet rich - - in Santa Fe who are extremely liberal in their politics and generous to liberal causes and politicians. TJ
On Sun, Nov 4, 2018, 10:54 AM Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: > Why not put aside geography? For every democratic UC professor in > Berkeley, draw a republican fracking executive from North Dakota. > > Now we have airplanes and the internet. All these tribes are causing a > lot of problems. Time to break them up. > > > > *From: *Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Nick Thompson < > nickthomp...@earthlink.net> > *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Date: *Sunday, November 4, 2018 at 10:24 AM > *To: *'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] gerrymandering algorithm question > > > > Forgive me, but I am too old and dumb to do nodes and edges talk. Could > somebody translate this into defrocked Harvard English major talk. What > value is maximized by such a system? > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Marcus > Daniels > *Sent:* Saturday, November 03, 2018 10:14 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] gerrymandering algorithm question > > > > Consider a network where the nodes represent individual membership in a > district and the edges connect any two individuals that could possibly be > considered as being in the same area. An edge has a weight of -1 if the > neighbors are in opposing political parties and 1 if they are the same. A > node has the value of 1 if it is in a district and -1 if it is not in that > district. Districts are mutually exclusive, so all of the nodes > associated with an individual, when considered as binary values, must sum > to one. Specifically suppose there are two districts, and node(A,D) is > defined as individual’s A participation in district D. Then > (node(A,0)+1)/2+(node(A,1)+1)/2 = 1. Constraints like this can be > converted into penalties by moving the RHS to the LHS, negating the value, > and then squaring the LHS. An energy for the whole network can be written > as a sum of all of the network’s interactions. > > > > sum(edge_weight(i,j)*node(i,d)*node(j,d)) where i < j for i,j from the > set of nodes and d from the set of districts > > + K*(all mutual-exclusion penalties as above) where K is a large > number > > > > Now minimize this energy using a system that can find the ground states of > a high dimensional Ising model, such as a quantum annealer. This function > will be minimal when each district has neighbors that tend to be in > different parties. > > > > *From: *Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Tom Johnson < > t...@jtjohnson.com> > *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Date: *Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 4:55 PM > *To: *"Friam@redfish. com" <friam@redfish.com> > *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] gerrymandering algorithm question > > > > First, we would have to agree on whether there will be objectives related > to the demography of any district? I prefer only counting the number of > current population 18 and over. Or some would argue for the total > population of any age. But given either choice, there will be serious > suggestions that doing so would work hardship on racial, ethnic or other > groups. Could be, but it could also mean that anyone running for office > would probably have to find a way to appeal to ALL voters. > > > > Second, let's say we're creating Congressional districts. Overlay a state > with a grid of hexagons of X diameter; could be 100 yards or 1000. I don't > know, but perhaps something like Netlogo could give us a scalable system to > run tests. > > > > Third, given a known population of potential voters, we know how many > Congressional districts a state would have. Randomly distribute that > number of hexagons across the state with the objective of maximizing the > centroid distances of all the hexagons. > > > > Fourth, expand out from each hexagon one additional hexagon at a time in a > circular fashion with all expansions starting on the same side of the > original hexagon. Total the number of potential voters. If there are no > potential voters in a hexagon, advance one more in the rotation. Then > repeat the same expansion, total the voters and do it again until the > desired district population is reached. > > > > There are obvious problems here: e.g. what happens when a district > encounters a state boundary or another district's hexagon early on? I > don't have a solution (yet). But I think this simulation could be easily > tested without a lot of CPU overhead. And after the districts are created, > we could start to look at the demographics of the potential voters. > > > > TJ > > > ============================================ > Tom Johnson > Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA > 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) > *NM Foundation for Open Government* <http://nmfog.org> > *Check out It's The People's Data > <https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671>* > > http://www.jtjohnson.com t...@jtjohnson.com > ============================================ > > > > > > On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 4:14 PM Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> > wrote: > > Oh, I absolutely agree that we could design districts to maximize any > variable we wanted. And with a little luck, we might maximize a couple, or > even three. But inevitably, we will encounter some variable that is > negatively correlated with those we already maximize, so even we > philosopher kings will be dissatisfied with the result. > > > > So, you philosopher-kings out there: if you were designing districts out > there, how would you do it. How about all districts at-large? Ranked > choice voting? How about requiring all districts to match the state-wide > political distribution of the whole state and redistricting after every > election? Seriously. How would you do it? > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Marcus > Daniels > *Sent:* Saturday, November 03, 2018 11:24 AM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group < > friam@redfish.com> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] gerrymandering algorithm question > > > > Nick writes: > > > > “I don’t mean to say that “fair districts” aren’t possible. I just mean > to say that I, as your philosopher-king, could not design them.” > > > > Wasn’t there a recent effort by the MIT Sloan school to redesign the > school bus routes in Boston? They managed to reduce the cost and time of > the routes by a large amount, but then many complained because it didn’t > reflect the underlying class structure of the community and the preferences > of the richer communities. > > > > One can design an optimization to balance any set of goals. It’s just > that some of the goals we don’t talk about. They are wired-in to our > reptile brain as baseline expectations and not reflected in the political > conversations of dinner parties. > > > > Marcus > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove