Undergraduate Mathematics Students

The mathematics of voting (and pizza!)

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Just in time for the election:

The mathematics of voting
Molly Fenn
Thursday, October 30, 2008
3:00--3:50 p.m.
Harrelson 330

We've all seen how complicated elections can be. Changing our rules for counting votes and determining a winner can change the outcome of an election. In this talk, we will look at several different methods for voting, all of which seem completely reasonable, and we will demonstrate the completely unreasonable outcomes these methods lead to. We will look at some desirable properties any voting system should have, and then prove a simplified version of Arrow?s Impossibility Theorem which states that no voting system can satisfy all of these properties. (Uh oh.)

Pizza provided as always!

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Check out the SUM Series website for more information on the SUM Series.

Upcoming topics include:

Buffon's noodle and the Monte Carlo method.
Ranking sports teams with Google's PageRank.
Math movie nite (afternoon)

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TELL YOUR FRIENDS!

Posted at 02:34PM Oct 24, 2008 by nreadin in Courses and Advising  |  Comments[0]