3 ms·
I've always found the perimeter over area close to the mark for jerrymandering but not quite good enough (because of the coastline paradox - forces picking an
by f154hfds 6y ago
I've always found the perimeter over area close to the mark for jerrymandering but not quite good enough (because of the coastline paradox - forces picking an arbitrary segment size [1]).
My idea - I welcome counter arguments - is to calculate the district's center of mass and find the furthest point the district still contains from that center of mass. Then create a circle with that distance as the radius and find the percentage of _land_ (maybe even privately owned land?) within that circle that is in the district. My view is that the percentage should be something like 50% (maybe higher? Hard to say without actually designing districts and checking the numbers).
50% would mean that half of the habitable land remaining in the circle could be a different district but no more.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
- bijection 6y agoWhat about perimeter vs area but let coastlines be counted as straight lines?
- f154hfds 6y agoThe coastline paradox extends to much more than coastlines - pretty much all natural boundaries I would think. It's certainly doable, it just seems to add extra variables to what really needs to be as foolproof as possible.
- bo1024 6y agoI don't think the coastline paradox has to apply, because we don't have to define the boundaries by existing geographical features like rivers or so on. Instead, you can simply put down a finite number of points on a map and define the districts using polygons (connect the points with straight lines.