Summer is not enough to redistrict

      Summer went by really fast. I was busy enough with other problems. Since my blog doesn’t really have an audience, it is more like a diary to be reread someday.   A relative of mine peeked at it.          I downloaded census and other data for Arizona. I compiled code I wrote in Fortran.  Sorting [...]

Sorting the census blocks for redistricting

  Another method for sorting the census data for redistricting has occurred to me. Back in ancient times, there were machines that could sort punch cards. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_80_series_Card_Sorters.  For example, cards could be sorted into ranges of latitude. The cards would be conveyed horizontally until they dropped into the proper bin below.  Today, the same [...]

Closs Enuf 4 Govment Work

  For redistricting, random processes should not be used.  Certain software given the identical census data run on a compatible computer should yield identical results.  That way all parties can verify that the results are not just something cooked up in a smoke filled room.  If the results from different computers aren’t precisely identical, careful analysis [...]

Out of Sorts with Redistricting

      My ideas for redistricting with a sandboxwalls program involve a lot of data sorting.  First, the census blocks of a state are sorted by latitude.  However, the states are two dimensional, not one-dimensional.  Consider a television picture.  The picture is made up of horizontal stripes.  Using that concept, the latitude of the State is [...]

Faster than a speeding square root

In the data from the Census Bureau, the location of the census blocks are given by latitude and longitude. Instead of degrees, minutes, and seconds, the latitude and longitude are given in millionths of a degree. Fortunately, these are conveniently expressed as 32-bit integers. Finding the geographical distance between two points usually means employing the [...]

Make my districts contiguous please

In redistricting, contiguous is a fancy word meaning the district is one lump without any loose flakes floating around. If a district includes part of a county, I see  no reason for that district to have little pieces of that county that are unconnected with the main part of the district. This assumes that the county [...]

Redistricting on the Internet

The World Wide Web meant easy access to previously hidden information. No longer was it necessary to hunt through libraries to find information on unusual subjects, such as redistricting. I found that there were a few others out there currently pursuing computerized redistricting. Better yet, blogging offers the chance to make my findings available to [...]

The Joy and Toll of Moore’s Law

Redistricting was also affected by Moore’s Law.  I saw no reason that Gordon Moore’s prediction should be a law, as I saw it as a mere coincidence that would be temporarily true. I still don’t understand why Moore’s Law is true, but I was obviously wrong about it being temporary.  The result of ever increasing [...]

From Bubbles to Sand

Redistricting based on soap bubbles wasn’t good enough. Finite element analysis to simulate surface tension of the bubbles was too computationally intensive. Such redistricting also did not take into account county or city boundaries. Although the starting and growing from a seed point seemed correct, a better apportioning method was needed. I considered a pile [...]

How I Got Interested

     Back in ancient times when I was in college, I was taking a couple of very different courses.  One course was Computer Science, where I learned a computer language called Fortran II-D.  Yes, that’s II meaning two in Roman Numerals, it was that long ago.  The other course was Political Science, where I learned [...]