I debated posting this, but it is so rare that a human behavior would be such a perfect example of a mathematical principle that I couldn’t resist. The idea came from a great summary of the state of affairs with Trump by Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic. Continue reading
An article by Lee Moran in Huffpost is rather remarkable. Apparently someone failed grade-school math. I wonder how he got through medical school, especially the pharmacology course.
“NBC News’ Kristen Welker on Wednesday asked Mehmet Oz — the former talk show host and heart surgeon who now runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — about President Donald Trump’s repeated claim, mockingly dubbed “MAGA Math,” that he’ll get pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices by more than 100%. Continue reading
This is one the best articles I have read on gerrymandering regarding its political import, and of course it is by one of the most articulate mathematicians, Jordan Ellenberg:
“Fixing partisan gerrymandering requires some technical calculations. That’s why we filed a mathematicians’ brief to better define the problem—and the solution.”
See Gerrymandering at SCOTUS. (You will have to read the article to understand the picture.)
(Updates 4/8/2019, 6/27/2019, 8/27/2022) Continue reading
This subject admittedly has only a tenuous relationship to mathematics (via arithmetic), but perhaps it can join more mathematically challenging political topics like voting and gerrymandering. In any case, I was stimulated to consider the idea of reapportioning the US Senate by the % US population of each state by an 8 December 2018 article in the Atlantic by former Congressman John Dingell, who advocated abolishing the Senate. I thought this a bit too Draconian and considered the percent population idea as a better compromise. It turned out I was not alone in having this (obvious) thought: I just came across a more extensive 2 January 2019 Atlantic article by Eric Orts that concurs with my idea about reapportionment of the Senate, discusses the legal ramifications in more detail, and echoes the benefits I mentioned as well as others. See Restructuring the US Senate.
In light of subsequent events it may be that being a politician requires its own set of skills, but this praise of his profession of engineering before he became president casts the unfortunate Herbert Hoover in a different light. My father brought this surprising excerpt from Hoover’s autobiography to my attention years ago. I have highlighted the part that is especially insightful. Unfortunately, the balance of the chapter praising an engineer’s involvement in government does not fare as well, given the author, though a subsequent engineer US president, whatever his shortcomings, was never faulted for his honesty and moral rectitude. See the Profession of Engineering.