Topologists tackle the trouble with poll placement
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
I don't see how much good the persistent topology adds here, though. Why bother to do the abstract birth-death diagram and measure the variance in lifetime of these simplices, when the variance and median of the areas in the Voronoi diagram will give you a much easier and more interpretable result?
Well, my personal feeling as someone who has published math papers is that there is a bit of a pressure in mathematics to continually do things in new ways, even if they are not the best ways of doing things. Topological data analysis seems to be of that sort.
Of course, there could be debate here...but I do think that a lot of mathematics has gone past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to its usefulness or even artistic elegance as an abstract art of the intellect. Yet, the show must go on I suppose.
This reads like a quote from 200 years ago.
…however, surely if we’re reaching some sort of plateau in mathematical understanding, it’s the end of all research — and that is slightly hard to believe.
Do you think we’re nearing a proof of the Collatz conjecture? Or is the theory we have just totally inadequate?
Well, Terrence Tao made a recent advance towards it. It's hard no doubt, but I don't think recent theory is inadequate, except maybe that no one has found any structural link to a body of more advanced math like it was done with Fermat's last theorem, which is why some people think we need new theory to solve it.
Also, I definitely didn't mean to imply we are reaching a plateau of mathematical understanding: there's still a long way to go in proof theory, K-theory, Langlands (a better understanding of orbital integerals, how to compute them symbolically...), nonabelian cohomology even (lots of stuff there seems ad-hoc like definitions of higher nonabelian cohomoogy groups).
What I do mean to imply is that it is getting to the point where none of the discovers at that level really lead BACK to anything that the vast majority of scientists or even math graduate students have much interest in. That's different in cases like evolutionary biology: even the advanced discoveries can still be tied back to things that are interesting for the "every day scientist".
Math has lost that link. It's not running out of problems, but it's running out of interesting problems IMO.
We are clueless of our ignorance, and of how much there is still to discover in all domains of science.
IMHO I think we are accelerating discovery and we do not know yet what to do with all the things we invent and discover.
Perhaps, but I do not believe we SHOULD discover that knowledge. So far, we have not had a great track record of developing wisdom along side that.
> IMHO I think we are accelerating discovery and we do not know yet what to do with all the things we invent and discover.
IMHO you are right and the knowledge is simply too powerful for us.
Another simple hack is to ensure it’s a Sunday so more people can vote throughout the day and don’t need to vote outside of work hours.
Or let’s vote everyone all at once on a Tuesday and try to solve the queue problem with…math.
I buy that it's rife for abuse in many countries, but the US has such a well-protected (legally-speaking) postal service that it's probably the best country of any I know to do mail-in voting.
Holding fair elections has no meaning unless people actually believe they are fair.
Also “abuse” doesn’t necessarily mean voter fraud. It can be as simple as being pressured by a family member to vote a certain way if you do it without privacy. If you vote alone in a booth that’s not an issue (and again - it’s an issue as soon as someone thinks it’s an issue).
Setting up mini polling places where people can cast early votes using the same procedure as on Election Day solves many problems without causing any new concerns. Other solutions have concerns however small.
You don't trawl political discourse much, do you? Early voting is specifically called out as a problem by people who claim that their political enemies are voting multiple times. Whether or not that's a bona fide concern is somewhat irrelevant.
I don't understand: what's the difference between early voting and non-early voting in that regard? The last vote made by one voter is the one that counts. If someone votes multiple times under multiple naames they could do so regardless of whether there is early voting.
Are these people suggesting that singlee-day voting and long waiting times help integrity because... it's physically impossible or at least extremely inconvenient to vote multiple times if you have a 3h wait to vote, and even if you try you can only fit so many 3h queue periods into an election day? They seriously fear that if people are given the opportunity of "voting in 5 minutes at the mall" they'd invent 100 different personas and vote 100 times?
autotranslation> Chain vote, allows the purchase of votes, the first one who enters to vote, puts another envelope (not the authorized one, but any one). That vote will probably be contested, but they take the valid envelope with them. Then he inserts a ballot from his party into it and closes it tightly, then he can organize a chain of votes making sure that they are in his favor, even if there is a dark room. He offers each person a reward if they bring the empty envelope in exchange for taking the full envelope. Frequently used in low-income areas where political leaders organize the chain.
It's a lot of work to avoid the checks of voting in person. Without those checks it's too easy to force or pay someone to vote for a party and verify it 100%.
Very insightful book and article, recommended.
If only politics followed science, and not partisan loyalties!
A simple geo plot is enough to identify and visualize locations with long wait times.