The Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial

A nice thing to do in Knoxville (say, during a visit to @NIMBioS) is to go to Market Square and take a look at the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial.

Here is a short video, with a full view of the Memorial's historical text: https://t.co/EeWV57Jncyhttps://t.co/UShnfB3Px0

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) February 26, 2019

Hindsight's 2020 Presidential Campaign

I don't know about you, but I'll be voting for the team of Hindsight/Forethought in 2020.

Today's Theme Song: "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

The UK had the vote on Brexit today, and there is an obvious theme song (and a clash of opinions too!).

I posted it on Facebook this morning, and Mariano Beguerisse Díaz subsequently tweeted about it. (We had already discussed the apt theme song several weeks ago, so I knew what I wanted to post this morning for quite a while.)

I am including Mariano's tweet in this post.

The official soundtrack of this day, courtesy of The Clash https://t.co/qFrRAxqxt4 Cc @masonporter #Brexit

— Mariano Beguerisse (@marianobegue) June 23, 2016

Update: The UK has voted to leave the European Union.

Let's Vote on the Baby's Gender!

CNN.com, you're doing it wrong!

"Literacy" Test

The test that is discussed in this article is one of the "literary" tests that was used by Louisiana to disenfranchise black voters in the 1960s. Apparently, one is supposed to get 100% of these questions correct in 10 minutes, and many of them are worded in ridiculously convoluted manners (and I am pretty sure that a couple of them are technically --- one might say "literally" --- impossible if one takes the phrasing literally). Ouch!

(Tip of the cap to Andrew Waugh.)

D'oh!

I bet this dude now wishes that his wife had voted. D'oh! (That said, the reasoning behind not voting is rather sensible. The "D'oh!" still applies, though.)

(Tip of the cap to Travis Hime.)

Score a Victory for Caltech

Apparently, a women wearing an 'MIT' shirt was barred from voting in Florida.

As a Caltech alum, I have mixed feelings about this. :)

It's bad for the country, but it's excellent ammunition against MIT. What a moral dilemma.

(Tip of the cap to Carlos Castillo-Chavez.)

Politicians Versus Hedgehogs

Clearly, you want to vote for hedgehogs. I know I do!

(Tip of the cap to Dave Fallon.)

Facebook and Voting

Check out this new paper that was just published in Nature about voter participation and Facebook friendships. It was a collaboration between Facebook Data team, my collaborator James Fowler (who is a political scientist by training), and others at UC San Diego.

This paper is in the process of making waves. For example, here is what the New York Times had to say about it in its article. By the way, the research for this paper was funded in part by a joint grant that James and I have from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, though please note that I was not part of this project. (I did read an early draft of this paper over 1.5 years ago and gave some comments on it, and that is the extent of my involvement.) It is really cool that we get to mention this paper in our report to the funding agency, though!

-1% of the Vote

Apparently, it is now possible to get -1% on a poll. Wow. That is kind of "awesome", though.

(Tip of the cap to Jed Yang.)

Mathematics and Voting

As this article by Donald Saari in the April 2008 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society eloquently discusses, one can uses mathematics to examine the arbitrary brokenness of voting rules.

Here is the abstract: The mathematical analysis of voting systems, and of aggregation rules in general, shows that they can yield paradoxes as well as preferences. In this article, featured here for Mathematics Awareness Month, the author explains what kind of problems can arise and how they can be mathematically understood.

Saari has written numerous articles and multiple books on the topic, and this particular expository piece is a good place to start. (Notice that I'm a bit late in writing this post... )