Thomas Weighill : Optimal transport methods for visualizing redistricting plans
- Applied Math and Analysis ( 0 Views )Ensembles of redistricting plans can be challenging to analyze and visualize because every plan is an unordered set of shapes, and therefore non-Euclidean in at least two ways. I will describe two methods designed to address this challenge: barycenters for partitioned datasets, and a novel dimension reduction technique based on Gromov-Wasserstein distance. I will cover some of the theory behind these methods and show how they can help us untangle redistricting ensembles to find underlying trends. This is joint work with Ranthony A. Clark and Tom Needham.