Edelman

Paul Edelman

"The dancing bear - what is a combinatorist doing in a law school?"

Law may not be the first place to look for mathematical inspiration, but I will show in this talk that legal controversies can lead to natural combinatorial questions. Focusing on the Banzhaf measure of voting power in simple games, I will illustrate how questions of legal doctrine, such as what voting methods meet a "one person - one vote " standard, give rise to combinatorial theorems.