You can have your cake and redistrict it too

The design of algorithms for political redistricting generally takes one of two approaches: optimize an objective such as compactness or, drawing on fair division, construct a protocol whose outcomes guarantee partisan fairness. We aim to have the best of both worlds by optimizing an objective subject to a binary fairness constraint. As the fairness constraint we adopt the geometric target, which requires the number of seats won by each party to be at least the average (rounded down) of its outcomes under the worst and best partitions of the state; but we extend this notion to allow the two parties to compute their targets with respect to different election datasets. Our theoretical contribution is twofold: we introduce a new model of redistricting that closely mirrors the classic model of cake-cutting and we prove the feasibility of the geometric target in this model. Our empirical results, which use real election data and maps of six US states, demonstrate that the geometric target is feasible in practice and that imposing it as a fairness constraint comes at almost no cost to three well-studied optimization objectives.First author draf

Algorithmic Processes And Social Values

In this thesis, we study several problems at the interface of algorithmic decision-making and society, focusing on the tensions that arise between these processes and social values like fairness and privacy. In the first chapter, we examine the design of financial portfolios which adequately serve all segments of the population. In the second, we examine an allocation setting where the allocator wishes to distribute a scarce resource across many groups fairly, but does not know ahead of time which groups have a need for the resource. In the third, we study a game-theoretic model of information aggregation and the effects of individuals acting to preserve the privacy of their personal beliefs on the collective welfare of the population. Finally, we look at some of the issues that arise from the desire to apply automated techniques to problems in redistricting, including fundamental flaws in the definitions and frameworks typically used

Final technical report : leveraging mobile network big data for developmental policy

The research addresses how big data can provide evidence to better inform public policy and allow for greater use of evidence in the policy making process. In addition to more detailed research in the area of transportation and urban planning (commuting patterns), this research articulates and answers questions in other domains such as health (modeling the spread of diseases) and official statistics (mapping poverty for instance). Guidelines were translated into legal language so that mobile operators can responsibly share data. Traditional survey methods that provide enough detail to accurately assess conditions are costly and can rarely reach a representative portion of the population, especially in poorer areas

Performing Cancer Cultures: Activating Healthcare and Environmental Justice

"Performing Cancer Cultures: Activating Healthcare and Environmental Justice" addresses the possibilities for performance to intervene in U.S cancer cultures in three primary ways. First: as renewed, reiterated rituals performed in the NC Moral Mondays and HKonJ coalition movement for, among other things, Medicaid expansion, coal ash clean up, and a fracking ban. Second: in oral histories told and testimonies given in and beyond U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings on coal ash waste, part of ethnographic research and action-affiliations in Walnut Cove, an environmental health sacrifice zone in Stokes County, NC. Third: in the open format, stage performance of Flipping Cancer that I have offered in multiple sites 2014-19, developed from ongoing, clinician-, caregiver-, and patient-tailored InterPlay workshops and interviews centering stage IV disease. I argue that the embodied performance of story by persons living/dying with advanced cancers in both fossil fuel and healthcare worlds importantly challenges the particularly vigorous claims U.S. cancer cultures make on raced and gendered bodies, leading to the “redemptive-prophetic” stance I pursue in my current work. In body dispatches, spatial reclamation practices, and testimonial witness, I explore the multi-layered inequities that spark creation amidst cultural and policy contradictions, as underrepresented community members mobilize change.Doctor of Philosoph