Philosophy professor Conor Mayo-Wilson will be co-teaching a course on "Statistics and Philosophy of Voting" in Autumn 2020. The course is offered by the Department of Statistics and the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (CSSS) and listed as STAT 498 / CSSS 594 in the time schedule. He will be co-teaching the course with Elena Erosheva (Statistics and Social Work) and Marina Meila (Statistics).
This course will consider a number of topics that are relevant to modern voting and elections through statistical and social choice lenses. According to the description, topics will include: "the purpose and limits of democratic decision-making; majority rule, social choice theory and the associated impossibility theorems; judgement aggregation; probabilistic pooling; majority judgement and other voting procedures; election case studies; election polling and forecasting; misinformation and elections; electoral redistricting and gerrymandering; fairness aspects in voting, voting in contexts other than elections. Topics before and around November 3 will be chosen to be directly related to the 2020 US election."
Another philosophy professor, Michael Blake, will feature as one of the course's guest speakers.
For full details, read the Department of Statistics' new course announcement.