DECENNIAL

REDISTR

RICH MATHEMATICS IN CONTEXT

Redistricting can provide a real-world application
for use in a wide range of mathematics classrooms.

very two years in the United States, districts in each state elect representatives to
the U.S. House of Representatives. The
district boundaries are not permanent;
rather, they are redrawn every ten years
in a process known as redistricting. Mathematics
is useful in understanding this important and often
contentious process. Redistricting is a rich context
for teaching and learning mathematics, one that
illuminates both American democracy and important mathematical ideas. We offer suggestions for
classroom implementation as well as resources for
further exploration.

WHAT IS REDISTRICTING?
Each state is awarded a number of representatives
in the U.S. House based on population totals from
the most recent decennial census. The 435 congressional seats are reapportioned across the fifty states,
in proportion to the states populations, provided

that each state receives at least one representative.

Texass population grew so much in relation to
other states, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, that
it will be allotted four additional House representatives. In contrast, New York States population
had less growth and will have two fewer House
representatives. Ratliff and Saxe (2010) provide an
interesting mathematical history of the reapportionment process. (See also Caulfield, pp. 17883, in
this issue.)
Once each state receives its number of House
seats, the states area is divided into a number of
districts so that each district has one seat. This process, known as redistricting, takes place every ten
years, after each U.S. Census. The current round
will conclude in time for the November 2012 congressional elections. Each district will then use a
plurality election system to select a single representative. Changing district boundaries can change the
outcome of elections.

206 MatheMatics teacher | Vol. 106, No. 3 October 2012

Copyright 2012 The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc. www.nctm.org. All rights reserved.
This material may not be copied or distributed electronically or in any other format without written permission from NCTM.

iLLUstratiON BY DiaNe FeNster

Laurie h. rubel, Michael Driskill, and Lawrence M. Lesser

RICTING

uniformly over land area, and so number sense,

geometric measurement, and proportional reasoning are required. The game brings students back
to the definition of geometry and its first use
measuring the earth.

COMPACTNESS

Fig. 1 this state has twenty residents; the colors represent their party allegiance.

A powerful way to introduce redistricting to students is by using an example such as that shown in
figure 1 (adapted from Levitt 2010, p. 12), which
represents a hypothetical state with twenty residents, marked according to where they live. The
colors of the dots represent political allegiances: to
the purple party or to the green party. Ask students
to divide this state into four districts, each with five
residents. The districts can be drawn so that the
green voters are the majority in all four districts.
Draw the district lines differently; green might be
the majority in some of districts but the minority in
others. Students will quickly see that the placement
of the lines can determine which political party is
likely to be supported in each district and across
the state. In how many ways can four contiguous
districts be created?

POPULATION EQUALITY ACROSS DISTRICTS

Imagine two identical piesone shared equally
among four people and the other shared equally
between two people. Clearly, the smaller group gets
more pie per person. States must create districts to
avoid this type of inequality: The law requires that
representatives be distributed across equal numbers
of voters, so that every persons vote carries the
same weight. Drawing district boundaries to include
equal populations, however, is not a trivial task.
An introductory lesson might include asking
students to try a few rounds of the Redistricting
Game (www.redistrictinggame.org). In the initial
mission, students choose to be a consultant for
their choice of political party and are tasked with
drawing district lines on a virtual map. Households,
displayed as dots on the screen, are colored either
red or blue to indicate political allegiance. Students
are required to draw lines so that every district has
between 640,000 and 650,000 constituents. In the
game, as in reality, population is not distributed
208 MatheMatics teacher | Vol. 106, No. 3 October 2012

A subsequent lesson might begin by asking students

to posit the shape of a district. Are some shapes
better than others? Is one ideal? A familiar entrylevel algebra problem involves considering the area
formed by rectangles with a fixed perimeter. Students are typically asked to take a given quantity
of fencing and find the dimensions of the largest
rectangular garden that this fencing could enclose.
If this question is recast as a question about redistricting, students could determine that for a
fixed district perimeter, a square is the best shape
for a district because it contains the largest area.
Next, ask students to consider, for a given
perimeter, what nonrectangular shape contains
the most area. The answer (a circle) is why a circle
is usually defined to be the most compact district
shape. Districts that are too spread out or highly
indented are often suspect for reasons of fairness,
a topic that we will explore. The familiar fact that
circles cannot tessellate the plane is now given
fresh context; it is impossible for all districts to be
perfectly compact.
Next, challenge students to design a metric that
quantifies the compactness of a given district. If
given several simple polygons representing districts, can students construct a formula that assigns
a numerical measure to each? Once students have
created their own measures, have them compare
them to some measures of compactness that have
been considered (e.g., Young 1988).
A common mathematical compactness metric
is the Polsby-Popper method, which is defined by
the ratio of the districts area to the area of the
circle whose circumference is equal to the districts
perimeter, or
Polsby-Popper = 4

area of district

( perimeter of disttrrict )

Students can verify that setting the value of

the districts perimeter equal to 2pr, solving for
r, and then substituting r into the formula for a
circles area yields the given formula for the ratio
described. Districts measured according to this
method are assigned a number between 0 and
1, with 1 being the most compact. Districts that
have many indentations around the perimeter, as
opposed to a smooth perimeter, will have a lower
Polsby-Popper rating. Students can also verify the
value of the Polsby-Popper rating for specific,

Fig. 3 How closely does New Yorks 12th Congressional

District resemble the gerrymander in figure 2?

Fig. 2 The winged salamander took on the name

gerrymander.

simple figuresfor example, a square yields a

Polsby-Popper ratio of p/4 0.785.
The Reock measure compares a districts area
to the area of the smallest circle that can contain
that district. If the district is itself a circle, its Reock
value is 1. If the district is square, then students can
verify that the Reock value will not equal 1 but will
be closer to 1 than the Reock value for a more elongated rectangle that results in more nondistrict area
within the circle. Ask students to create Google
maps of congressional districts using Internet sites
such as www.govtrack.us. Using menu features of
Google Earth, students can be challenged to draw
polygons around a local districts boundaries, find
its area or perimeter, and then calculate a specific
measure of compactness for that district (see Rubel,
Chu, and Shookhoff 2011). There are many ways to
explore compactness in greater depth and to greater
degrees of mathematical sophistication.

FAIRNESS
Because each district elects one representative, drawing district lines is an important political process
that can be manipulated to benefit one political party
or another. In 1812, Elbridge Gerry, then governor
of Massachusetts, authorized a redistricting plan
that ensured his partys achieving a majority in the
state senate. One particularly distorted district was
depicted in a newspaper with wings, claws, and the
head of a salamander (see fig. 2). The beast, known
as the gerrymander, gave rise to the popular term
describing unscrupulous redistricting.
Gerrymandering often unduly influences election outcomes by diluting the voting power of a
particular community of interest that shares

Fig. 4 New Yorks 12th Congressional District is principally

Hispanic and Asian, as shown by the yellow and red dots.

racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, linguistic, political, or

cultural characteristics. One form of gerrymandering is cracking, in which a particular community
of interest is split across several districts so that it
remains a minority in each district. Another form
is packing a community of interest into a single
district so that it is the majority in that district
alone. With these ideas in mind, have students
reexamine the fictional state depicted in figure 1.
Ask students to demonstrate how to divide this
state into four districts that effectively pack the
purple voters into as few districts as possible or,
alternatively, to crack the purple voters so that
they are the minority in all districts.
A districts degree of compactness can be evidence of possible gerrymandering, so courts are
often wary of districts that are less compact. Lack
of compactness, however, does not necessarily
imply that a district has been gerrymandered.
Sometimes districts lack compactness as a way to
protect the voting rights of minority communities.
The Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1965,
requires that states create districts in which racial
and ethnic minority populations can elect a candidate of their choice. The Voting Rights Act also
Vol. 106, No. 3 October 2012 | Mathematics Teacher 209

protects against redistricting plans that dilute the

voting power of minority communities. In practice,
creating districts that satisfy both compactness and
the Voting Rights Act can be difficult.
An example of a district that has a weak compactness measure is New Yorks 12th Congressional District, created after the 2000 U.S. Census
(see fig. 3, created using www.govtrack.us). Its
southern border runs along the outer edge of
Brooklyn, where it crosses the Brooklyn Bridge and
grabs the neighborhood of Chinatown and part of
the Lower East Side; then it follows the Williamsburg Bridge back into Brooklyn and angles up into
Queenslooking not so different in shape from
the original gerrymander. The unusual shape of
New Yorks 12th District and many other strangely
shaped districts around the country can sometimes
be explained by the racial or ethnic distribution
of the population in those regions. A map of the
same region depicting residential data by race or
ethnicity (see fig. 4), shows how the New Yorks
12th District contains predominantly yellow and
red dots, representing Hispanic and Asian people,
respectively (each dot represents 200 people),
which contrasts with neighboring districts that contain blue dots (representing African American and
black people) and green dots (representing white
people). In other words, the districts lines appear
to have been drawn deliberately to include communities of interest that are Hispanic or Asian.
A free online tool that creates maps with the
most recent U.S. Census data for any state to illustrate a regions racial or ethnic distribution can
be found at projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/
explorer. Interpretations of these and other maps
can be used to help students understand the shaping of congressional districts and provide students
the opportunity to connect mathematics, politics,
and community. This opportunity is especially
important for students who have not been successful in mathematics and may not have had the
chance to read and write the world with mathematics (Gutstein 2005).
In addition to its relevance to entry-level topics
of number, rate, and various forms of geometric
measurements, the topic of redistricting can inspire
exploration of more advanced mathematics as well.
A lesson investigating the application of the Voting
Rights Act would be rather complex, for example.
Special districts are required for racial and ethnic
minority communities only after it has been determined that members of a particular group tend

Table 1 Hispanic Voters and Voting Pattern by District

Y

14

19

27

37

36

53

48

65

12

18

24

36

42

53

68

79

86

210 Mathematics Teacher | Vol. 106, No. 3 October 2012

always to vote for a candidate of that same group.

Proving that voting is polarized in this way can be a
thorny issue; data at the level of an individual voter
are generally not known, and inferring individual
data from group data is not trivial.
Students could consider the data in table 1,
which describes nine equal-sized districts; X is
the percentage of registered voters who are Hispanic and Y is the percentage of votes going to
the Hispanic-preferred candidate. Using statistics
tools such as line of best fit, students can estimate
or infer from this data set (COMAP 2013, p. 238)
how to interpret Y when X is 100. Next, they can
identify and critique the assumption (see, e.g., Behr
2004) that Hispanics in heavily Hispanic districts
will vote for a particular candidate as readily as will
Hispanics in sparsely Hispanic districts. Note that
because racial data are not collected on most states
voter registration forms, Hispanic voter registration
rates must be estimated first. This estimate might
be done by performing regression on the percentage
of voting age population that is registered versus
the percentage of voting age population that is
Hispanic.
Debates continue over methods of gauging voting polarization (e.g., Loewen and Grofman 1989).
Sharing unresolved mathematics problems such
as these can be a compelling demonstration for
students of the ways that people apply and create
mathematics to solve problems. An examination
of aspects of redistricting could also be extended to
other topics in discrete mathematics on the theme
of apportionment, such as fair division or election
theory. These examples all have social implications
and vividly illustrate relationships between mathematics and social power.

CONCLUSION
Redistricting is a curricular vehicle that empowers
students to participate in American democracy in
several ways. Redistricting involves students various authentic communities, such as their ethnic or
racial groups, their age group, or their political affiliation groups. Multimedia games and widely accessible mapping technologies offer exciting potential
for visualizing districts.
Students who have been introduced to redistricting will be equipped to follow current events over
the next several yearsand in future decades
around the process of redistricting in their own or
neighboring states. Students could attend or participate in public hearings in which local redistricting
plans are being debated. Students could assess a
proposed redistricting plan or even collaborate to
create their own redistricting plan.
At the same time, redistricting is a context that
offers students, at all levels, the opportunity to

see some basicor more advancedmathematical ideas in a new and interesting terrain.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The preparation of this manuscript was supported in
part by the National Science Foundation under grant
no. 0742614. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

ANNOTATED LIST OF ONLINE RESOURCES

Americans for Redistricting Reform
http://www.americansforredistrictingreform.org/
A national nonpartisan group. Includes a page
with redistricting principles, details about each
state, and links on the state page to news articles
about the current redistricting process. Also contains summaries of redistricting court cases.
The Public Mapping Project
http://www.publicmapping.org/
Software that allows the public to use U.S. Census data to draw districts in their home states.
The U.S. Census guide to redistricting
http://www.census.gov/rdo/
Details how redistricting data are collected and
who does what with them.
Raw census data used for redistricting
http://factfinder2.census.gov
General information and a map of congressional
districts
http://www.govtrack.us/
In addition to general information and a map of
congressional districts, includes a zoom feature.
Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law
http://www.brennancenter.org/redistricting
Everything you ever wanted to know about
redistricting. A foldout poster summarizing
many of these ideas is available at http://www
.makingpolicypublic.net.
Redrawing the Lines
http://www.redrawingthelines.org/votingrightsact
NAACPs website with information about the
Voting Rights Act and the importance of communities of interest based on race.
Purdue University
http://www.lib.purdue.edu/govdocs/
redistricting.html
Links to each states redistricting site.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Behr, Joshua G. 2004. Race, Ethnicity, and the Politics
of City Redistricting: Minority-Opportunity Districts
and the Election of Hispanics and Blacks to City
Councils. SUNY African American Studies, edited
by John R. Howard and Robert C. Smith. Albany,

NY: State University of New York Press.

COMAP. 2013. For All Practical Purposes: Mathematical Literacy in Todays World. 9th ed. New York:
Freeman.
Gutstein, Eric. 2005. Reading and Writing the World
with Mathematics: Toward a Pedagogy for Social
Justice. Critical Social Thought series, edited by
Michael W. Apple. New York: Routledge.
Levitt, Justin. A Citizens Guide to Redistricting. 2010.
Foreword by Erika Wood. New York: Brennan
Center for Justice, New York University School of
Law. www.brennancenter.org.
Loewen, James W., and Bernard Grofman. 1989.
Recent Developments in Methods Used in Vote
Dilution Litigation. The Urban Lawyer 21 (Summer): 589604.
Mapping America: Every City, Every Block. New
York Times. projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/
explorer.
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
(NCTM). 2000. Principles and Standards for School
Mathematics. Reston, VA: NCTM.
Peterson, David W. 2008. Putting Chance to Work:
Reducing the Politics in Political Redistricting.
Chance 21 (1): 2226.
Ratliff, Tommy, and Karen Saxe. 2010. The Politics
before the Politics: Census 2010, Reapportionment,
and Redistricting. Math Horizons (November): 59.
Rubel, Laurie, Haiwen Chu, and Lauren Shookhoff.
2011. Mapping to Learn and Learning to Map Our
Students Worlds. Mathematics Teacher 104 (8):
58791.
Young, H. Peyton. 1988. Measuring the Compactness
of Legislative Districts. Legislative Studies Quarterly 13 (February): 10515.

LAURIE H. RUBEL, laurie.rubel@

gmail.com, is an associate professor in the Department of Secondary
Education at Brooklyn College of the
City University of New York. She enjoys working with and learning from
teachers in New York City. MICHAEL
DRISKILL, driskill.michael@gmail
.com, is a program officer at Math
for America, New York. He taught
mathematics at the Spence School
in New York City, where he enjoyed
developing real-world applications of mathematics for the classroom. LAWRENCE M. LESSER,
lesser@utep.edu, is a professor at The University
of Texas at El Paso. He has taught high school
mathematics and worked as the staff statistician
for the Texas Legislative Council (a nonpartisan
agency) during the 199091 redistricting process.

Vol. 106, No. 3 October 2012 | Mathematics Teacher 211