Today's episode is an encore presentation of a conversation I had last year with mathematician Moon Duchen.

Sometimes as an academic, you study a topic and then something happens in the world that

suddenly makes your work a lot more important. And that's exactly what happened to Moon

Duchen. She works on gerrymandering and her work has been thrust into the spotlight

because of the highly politicized redistricting plans currently being debated. This was an important

conversation when we had it last year and it's even more important today.

At first glance, my guest today, Moon Duchen, looks like a fairly typical example of a successful professor of mathematics. She built her academic reputation by working on incredibly

abstract ideas in geometry. But Moon has done something way beyond the typical.

She managed to find a very practical application for her abstract ideas

in the area of political gerrymandering.

And since then, she's worked on the ground with state commissions and courts

to transform the way redistricting has done.

We don't have a baseline. We don't know what normal districting looks like.

And what the math folks have brought to the table is better and better methods for

sampling from that huge, unthinkable wilderness of plans.

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

Moon Dugent first saw the unexpected connection between her geometric research and gerrymandering

when she taught an undergraduate course

on the mathematics of social choice in voting.

This is a kind of class assignment

every professor tries to avoid.

It's so much work to prepare a new course

...