Comments on: Electoral rehex http://bit-player.org/2008/electoral-rehex An amateur's outlook on computation and mathematics. Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:52:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.2 Comment on Electoral rehex by: Jim Ward http://bit-player.org/2008/electoral-rehex#comment-1688 Wed, 21 May 2008 11:39:50 +0000 http://bit-player.org/2008/electoral-rehex#comment-1688 Your spam screener could be defeated by an intelligent spambot who kept guessing integers or had some simple sequences programmed in. A better screener might be one where the answer is not implicit in the question, say something easily Googleable, like What was Turing's first name? Or what is the capital of Fiji? Your spam screener could be defeated by an intelligent spambot who kept guessing integers or had some simple sequences programmed in. A better screener might be one where the answer is not implicit in the question, say something easily Googleable, like What was Turing’s first name? Or what is the capital of Fiji?

]]> Comment on Electoral rehex by: Jim Ward http://bit-player.org/2008/electoral-rehex#comment-1687 Wed, 21 May 2008 11:26:51 +0000 http://bit-player.org/2008/electoral-rehex#comment-1687 Clinton wins! Clinton wins!

]]> Comment on Electoral rehex by: Barry Cipra http://bit-player.org/2008/electoral-rehex#comment-1686 Thu, 15 May 2008 15:48:29 +0000 http://bit-player.org/2008/electoral-rehex#comment-1686 Among its many virtues, political hex (or "pox") would prompt a careful definition of what it means for a candidate to "win" a state. Note that Clinton is credited with wins in Nevada and New Hampshire, even though Obama wound up with more delegates in NV (13 to 12) and the same number in NH (9-9). Texas is more complicated: Clinton "won" the primary, while Obama "won" the caucus contest and came out ahead overall in delegate count, 99 to 94. (There is a nice interactive map with all kinds of information at http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html.) As it happens, none of these states is hex-decisive this time around, but you can't count on that being the case in 2012. On top of this, should one not also count the superdelegates from each state as they commit to one candidate or another? I wonder if there are any sates where the (current) superdelegate count switches the lead from one candidate to the other. Among its many virtues, political hex (or “pox”) would prompt a careful definition of what it means for a candidate to “win” a state. Note that Clinton is credited with wins in Nevada and New Hampshire, even though Obama wound up with more delegates in NV (13 to 12) and the same number in NH (9-9). Texas is more complicated: Clinton “won” the primary, while Obama “won” the caucus contest and came out ahead overall in delegate count, 99 to 94. (There is a nice interactive map with all kinds of information at http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html.) As it happens, none of these states is hex-decisive this time around, but you can’t count on that being the case in 2012.

On top of this, should one not also count the superdelegates from each state as they commit to one candidate or another? I wonder if there are any sates where the (current) superdelegate count switches the lead from one candidate to the other.

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