Week 9 Activity: Colloquium talk @ Mudd
This week, Harvey Mudd College hosts a talk by Sarah Cannon, from Claremont McKenna College. The talk begins at 4:15 PM on Thursday, but a reception with refreshments will be held outside at 4:00 PM.
For students enrolled in CS Colloquium (CS 195):
- If you’re in Section 1, we expect you to attend the event when it occurs (synchronously).
- If you’re in Section 2, we hope to record the event and post it for you to watch asynchronously.
Learning about Political Districting Plans via Random Sampling
Abstract
How can you tell if a political districting plan is gerrymandered? This is a hard question: compactness of districts or proportionality of election outcomes don’t tell the whole story. One method is too look at where a districting plan falls within the space of all possible districting plans – if it’s an outlier, it might be gerrymandered. However, there are far too many possible districting plans to look at all of them. Instead, we use random sampling algorithms: by picking a random subset of possible districting plans, we can still get a good idea of what this space of all possible districting plans looks like. How do we generate random political districting plans, and how do we know these plans are “random enough” for our purposes? This talk will provide an introduction to this area of work, including what’s been done, some recent results, and what we still don’t know, as well as some cautions about the limitations of this method.
About Sarah Cannon
Sarah Cannon is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Claremont McKenna College. She has worked at the intersection of mathematics and computer science throughout her entire career, which includes an undergraduate degree from Tufts University, a Master’s degree from the University of Oxford, a PhD from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. She enjoys teaching a mix of math, computer science, and data science classes, as well as running, reading mysteries, and playing field hockey.
When and How to Attend
- Thursday, March 21
- Location: Galileo McAlister, Harvey Mudd College
- Talk runs from 4:15–5:30 PM
- Optional reception begins at 4:00 PM
Recording for Section 2
(You must be logged in to view this video.)
This video is provided for students in Section 2 of CS 195 (and students in Section 1 who had to miss the talk due to extenuating circumstances). This is a private video, so please do not share it with others.
Required Assessment
To receive full credit for attending this colloquium, complete the assessment:
Please do so at your soonest convenience, within 24 hours of seeing the talk.
(When logged in, completion status appears here.)