Social Justice Mathematics and Data Analysis

Winning With Math: An Introduction to Social Choice for Prison Inmates

Written/Produced by Cassie H, Jack K, and myself.

Published a mini-textbook (60 pg) on the decision sciences for 4,000 inmates in prisons nationwide. Topics included voting theory, apportionment, and gerrymandering. Honorable Mention for Undergraduate Presentation at Joint Math Meetings 2020, “Winning with Math: An Introduction to Social Choice for Prison Inmates”. Analyzed survey data gathered from inmates on effectiveness of Cornell’s prison education system.

PDF link to the delivered mini-textbook can be found here.

The following motivates students to work through our text:

Interested in seeing how math can be used in the real world? In building mathematical reasoning skills? This packet explores three areas where math is used to make better decisions:

  • Voting Theory: Say 10 people are deciding between apples, bananas, and cherries for a snack. Should each person vote for their favorite fruit? What if each person instead votes against their least favorite? Will these different methods lead to different desserts being picked? Our first unit discusses the methods and math behind how a group of people make decisions.

  • Apportionment: Say two groups of people share a TV and together get to watch five TV shows each week. If one group has 3 people and the other has 7 people, how many shows should each group get to pick? Should the smaller group get 1 or 2 shows? It turns out that the exact same question comes up when deciding how many representatives each state gets in Congress! This is the kind of choice we’ll look at in our second unit.

  • Gerrymandering: Gerrymandering is a hot topic in the news and refers to a way that groups of people can use political power -- and math -- to give themselves a systematic advantage. This final unit of the newsletter will show you math so new that it's actively being debated in the U.S. Supreme Court!

This packet doesn't require knowing any math (or any politics) coming in. We'll get our hands dirty doing a few calculations along the way, but mostly we'll be focussing on logic, concepts, and ideas that build critical reasoning. We hope you'll join us!

Our Objectives Were To:​

  1. Partner with Prisoner Express, a nonprofit that provides educational materials to prison inmates throughout the United States. In response to inmate demand for program offerings that teach mathematical reasoning, we wrote a mini-textbook, requested by over 600 inmates, which discusses social choice: how voting theory, apportionment, and gerrymandering affect election outcomes.​

  2. Create a survey for Prisoner Express and distribute it to the 4,000 inmates the organization reaches. We are analyzing this data to better understand Prisoner Express’s reach and impact.​

Guiding Framework​

Critical Reasoning: our mini-textbook serves as an introduction to how real-world situations can be understood and evaluated using mathematics. The overarching goal is to strengthen the reader’s mathematical and critical reasoning skills.​

Conceptual Emphasis: to appeal to a broad audience, the mini-textbook covers material ranging in difficulty, from the basics of plurality voting to cutting-edge gerrymandering research. The emphasis is always placed on conceptual understanding over brute computation. ​

Engagement with the Reader: to maintain an approachable tone we place heavy emphasis on illustrations and practice questions. Practice questions include Reading Exercises, allowing the reader to test their understanding, and Discussion Questions, where readers can reflect and engage with the material on a deeper level.​

Direct Applications: we include relevant content that has real-world impacts regarding social choice. Generally, our examples draw heavily from politics, which relies on social choice for large-scale decisions.