3 credits
Blue Book Description: This course will provide students the mathematical background and quantitative skills in various mathematical applications in such areas which are related to voting, fair divisions which includes apportionment methods, and the understanding and application of basic graph theory such as Euler and Hamilton circuits. This course may be used by students from non-technical majors to satisfy 3 credits of their General Education Quantification (GQ) requirement. This course does not serve as a prerequisite for any mathematics courses and should be treated as a terminal course.
Pre-requisites: one unit of algebra or MATH 004
Pre-requisite for: None
Bachelor of Arts: Quantification
General Education: Quantification (GQ)
GenEd Learning Objective: Crit and Analytical Think
GenEd Learning Objective: Key Literacies
Suggested Textbook:
Excursions in Modern Mathematics, 9th Edition By Peter Tannenbaum Published by Pearson
Check with your instructor to make sure this is the textbook used for your section.
Topics:
1 The Mathematics of Elections
1.1 The Basic Elements of an Election
1.2 The Plurality Method
1.3 The Borda Count Method
1.4 The Plurality-with-Elimination Method
1.5 The Method of Pairwise Comparisons
1.6 Fairness Criteria and Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem
2 The Mathematics of Power
2.1 An Introduction to Weighted Voting
2.2 Banzhaf Power
2.3 Shapley-Shubik Power
2.4 Subsets and Permutations
3 The Mathematics of Sharing
3.1 Fair-Division Games
3.2 The Divider-Chooser Method
3.3 The Lone-Divider Method
3.4 The Lone-Chooser Method
3.5 The Method of Sealed Bids
3.6 The Method of Markers
4 The Mathematics of Apportionment
4.1 Apportionment Problems and Apportionment Methods
4.2 Hamilton’s Method
4.3 Jefferson’s Method
4.4 Adams’s and Webster’s Methods
4.5 The Huntington-Hill Method
4.6 The Quota Rule and Apportionment Paradoxes
5 The Mathematics of Getting Around
5.1 Street-Routing Problems
5.2 An Introduction to Graphs
5.3 Euler’s Theorems and Fleury’s Algorithm
5.4 Eulerizing and Semi-Eulerizing Graphs
6 The Mathematics of Touring
6.1 What Is a Traveling Salesman Problem?
6.2 Hamilton Paths and Circuits
6.3 The Brute-Force Algorithm
6.4 The Nearest-Neighbor and Repetitive Nearest-Neighbor Algorithms
6.5 The Cheapest-Link Algorithm