Undergraduate Mathematics Students
SUM Series, Thursday, March 19: Becoming President with less than 25% of the Vote, Chuck Wessell
Becoming President with less than 25% of the Vote
Chuck Wessell
Thursday, March 19, 2009
3:00--3:50 p.m.
Harrelson 330
In 1961, George Pólya wrote a short paper in which he derived a
theoretical minimum percentage of the popular vote a U.S. presidential
candidate could receive and still win the electoral college. In this talk
we'll review Pólya's work, tweaking it slightly to account for the
twenty-third amendment, which granted the District of Columbia three
electoral votes and passed after Pólya's paper was published.
We will then use computers and data from the 2008 presidential election to
see how realistic Pólya's solution is. Some preliminary computed results
will be shared, and a programming challenge will be made to interested
students. If time allows, we'll have a brief discussion on how states that
can split their electoral votes (currently Maine and Nebraska) complicate this
problem.
Check out the SUM Series website for more information on the SUM Series.
Posted at 08:34AM Mar 17, 2009 by nreadin in General | Comments[0]