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Constitutional calculus : the math of justice and the myth of common sense / Jeff Suzuki.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Suzuki, Jeff, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Representative government and representation--United States.
- Representative government and representation.
- Mathematical statistics.
- United States.
- Probabilities.
- Mathematical statistics--United States.
- Voting--United States.
- Voting.
- Social justice--United States.
- Social justice.
- Physical Description:
- 280 pages ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.
- Summary:
- In his Essay on the Application of Probability to Decisions Made by a Plurality of Votes (1785), Enlightenment philosopher Marquis de Condorcet gave expression to a dream: Mathematics can tell us how to build a better society. Mathematics allows us to predict what would happen if we changed the very foundations of society, to answer the "What if" question that is the origin of all reform. What if we used proper statistical methods to conduct a census instead of trying to obtain a to-the-person exact count? What if we abandon the electoral college and substitute a direct popular vote? What if we replace the twelve-person jury with a three-person tribunal? We can continuously assess the effectiveness of our societal institutions in an objective fashion. For decades, the debate over capital punishment focused on whether it was morally justified. ... It was not until the opponents of capital punishment enlisted the help of mathematics that they won a national moratorium from 1972 to 1976; and even though capital punishment returned 'p' in 1976, the philosophers, aided by mathematics, have managed to repeal capital punishment in eight states. In some cases, mathematics supports the paths suggested by tradition and common sense. In others, it shows us a better way. In all cases, we ignore the findings of mathematics at our peril. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Prologue: condorcet's dream
- The articles of the constitution
- Stand up and be estimated
- (Nearly) equal representation
- Weighting for a fair vote
- The impossibility of democracy
- Dragons and dummymanders
- The worst way to elect a president, except for all the rest
- The Bill of Rights
- Stop and frisk : the inefficiency of racism
- Reverend thomas bayes and the law
- "The man of statistics"
- Despair over disparity
- Once is an accident
- 6 5 10 n-angry men
- The peril and promise of social network analysis
- Strikes for three strikes
- The price of punishment
- Epilogue: the constitutional equation
- Notes
- Selected topical bibliography
- Index.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Local Notes:
- Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Maryann B. Sudo CW'63 and John B. Baxter, Jr., American History Fund.
- ISBN:
- 142141595X
- 9781421415956
- OCLC:
- 881720468
- Publisher Number:
- 99962050581
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