Maths and Voting

An episode of the Gresham College Lectures podcast, hosted by Gresham College, titled "Maths and Voting" was published on November 12, 2019 and runs 58 minutes.

November 12, 2019 ·58m · Gresham College Lectures

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Summary

We live in a democracy in which we all have a chance to vote. But does voting mean that the views of the majority are truly represented when it can be shown (mathematically) that all voting systems have flaws? In this talk we use mathematics to look at these flaws and answer associated questions (eg. voting trends and gerrymandering). For a bit of light relief we will see how the same principles work in the Eurovision Song Contest. A lecture by Chris Budd OBE, Gresham Professor of Geometry...

Episode Description

We live in a democracy in which we all have a chance to vote. But does voting mean that the views of the majority are truly represented when it can be shown (mathematically) that all voting systems have flaws?

In this talk we use mathematics to look at these flaws and answer associated questions (eg. voting trends and gerrymandering). For a bit of light relief we will see how the same principles work in the Eurovision Song Contest.

A lecture by Chris Budd OBE, Gresham Professor of Geometry 12 November

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/maths-and-voting

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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