We in the United States are deep in the middle of a major national election, and over half of the world’s population also have elections in 2024. This is why Carry the Two is going to focus on the intersection of mathematics and democracy for our new season.

In this, the sixth and final episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we dig into both how surveys and polls are conducted and how they are reported. For the former we are joined by David Dutwin Senior Vice President at NORC and Chief Scientist of Amerispeak and for the latter by Nathaniel Rakich Senior Editor and Senior Elections Analyst at FiveThirtyEight.

Find our transcript here: Google Doc or .txt file

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

David Dutwin

NORC

AmeriSpeak

VoteCast

Nathaniel Rakich

FiveThirtyEight

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Music by Blue Dot Sessions

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348

We in the United States are deep in the middle of a major national election, and over half of the world’s population also have elections in 2024. This is why Carry the Two is going to focus on the intersection of mathematics and democracy for our new season.

In this episode, the fifth episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we dig into political numbers and statistics. Helping Sam and Sadie do the digging is Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, FRS, OBE, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge, former Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, past Chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, and current non-executive Director at the UK Statistics Authority. David discusses why it is so important to be a trustworthy communicator, the watchdog work the UK’s Office of Statistics Regulation is engaging in, and his personal manifesto for those who share political numbers and statistics.

Find our transcript here: Google Doc or .txt file

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

David Spiegelhalter

UK Statistics Authority

Art of Statistics

Art of Uncertainty

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Music by Blue Dot Sessions

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348

In this episode, the fourth episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we dig into two stories about the intersection of political geography and mathematics. The first story comes from Ranthony Clark and is about her work with the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group around identifying communities of interest, with a focus on her in Ohio alongside Care Ohio, the Ohio organizing collaborative, the Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission, and the Kerwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State. The second story is about polling sites in cities, and the places in those cities that may not be covered as well as they should be. We hear from Mason Porter and Jiajie (Jerry) Luo, two members of the team, about how they used topological data analysis to find these holes in coverage.

Find our transcript here: Google Doc or .txt file

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Ranthony Clark

MGGG

Districtr

Mason Porter

Jiajie (Jerry) Luo

Persistent Homology for Resource Coverage: A Case Study of Access to Polling Sites Authors: Abigail Hickok, Benjamin Jarman, Michael Johnson, Jiajie Luo, Mason A. Porter

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Music by Blue Dot Sessions

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348