Activity-Specific Learning Objectives

1) Describe the political issue of gerrymandering in the United States, including different sources, causes, types, and consequences.

2) Research or ideate different metrics for determining if a voting district is gerrymandered, including metrics that relate to concepts of social justice and environmental justice.

3) Numerically estimate each voting district's centroid, the center of mass (e.g. population-weighted), and the distance between each using MATLAB.

4) Create visualizations using MATLAB that incorporate the centroid, center of mass, and other relevant metrics.

5) Critique the limitations of the metrics you consider and the uncertainty of your estimations.

6) Develop criteria to include in the design of new voting districts that relate to concepts of social justice and environmental justice.

Enduring Outcomes

1) Create and apply MATLABcomputerprogramsto analyze data and generate tables, charts, and graphs.

2) Communicate analytical approaches and results according to standard engineering practices.

3) An ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts. [ABET]

This activity is designed as a project-based, problem-solving laboratory module for a lower division, engineering-discipline programming course. The first semester of calculus is the prerequisite for this course. The activity design and project concept are largely based on the work of Dr. Diana A. Chen and Dr. Breanne Przestrzelski (Let_the_Composites_Speak_Using_Statics_to_Critically_Evaluate_Gerrymandering.pdf (Acrobat (PDF) 127kB Oct6 24)). As 2024 is an election year, this activity is intended to enhance the relevance of engineering concepts students are learning, and their application engineering concepts to students' lived experiences and cultural context. The timing of this activity occurs after students have been introduced to MATLAB data types, matrix-related functions, and image-related tools.

In this project, students will explore how the relationship between voting districts shapes/boundaries, social justice, and environmental justice. Each student will be assigned three voting districts: 1) the voting district in which they live or vote in, 2) a partisan-biased district in a "swing state", and 3) a competitive district. Each student will reproduce the geographic shape of their voting districts in MATLAB as a 2-D dimensional shape. They will also calculate the centroid, the population-weighted center of mass (with at least 3 population centers), and the distance between each. Students will also research and generate data visualizations related to the previous presidential election results, geography, socio-demographic distribution of people (race, wealth, education), and environmental resources (e.g. tree canopy coverage, impermeable surface, Superfund and toxic waste sites, natural parks, air quality, etc.) in their voting districts. Students will reflect on the implications of their analysis in the design of new voting districts and the relationship between engineering, society, and the environment.

The following files can be used as exemplars in order to introduce the project.:

Legislative_6922003057491571046.geojson ( 13.9MB Nov12 24)

US_Congressional_Districts.shp ( 60kB Nov12 24)

mapfromShapefile.m (Matlab File 383bytes Nov12 24)

MapfromGeoJSONfile.m (Matlab File 117bytes Nov12 24)

calcCentroidFromShapeFile.m (Matlab File 2kB Nov12 24)

1) Introduce the concepts of centroids and center of mass in the context of an Applied Physics or Engineering Statics problem; and use MATLAB to output a numerical and visual solution (see notes below).

2) Consider assigning students into teams of 3 or 4. Encourage discussions about team norming, availability outside of class, and communication. Also, inform students how much in-class time they will have to complete each deliverable.

3) Provide an introduction to the Electoral College and gerrymandering

• Engage students in a brief think-pair-share on their understanding of the Electoral College; and the difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives.
• Share the following video on gerrymandering and discuss how consideration of land and population are connected to concepts of social justice and environmental justice - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGLRJ12uqmk
  • Consider using jigsaw methods - Instruct students to form discussion groups with non-team members, and discuss how disparities in social justice, environmental justice, political power, and other concerns manifest in voting district boundaries. Following this discussion, instruct students to discuss how to measure or represent their ideas in MATLAB outputs and visualizations with their teams.
  • Similarly, ask students to reflect on the relationship between engineering education, engineering design, and professional ethics (e.g. - How does engineering education prepare us to fulfill our responsibilities as professionals, community members, and citizens?) 

3) Provide students with an overview of the project and deliverable scaffolds.  Modeling the following activities for the voting district that your school/institution sits in:

• Where and how to source publicly available data on voting district boundaries (https://gis.data.ca.gov/datasets/CDEGIS::us-congressional-districts/explore)
• How to visualize publicly available data and calculate district centroids in MATLAB (see example scripts below)
• How to calculate the population-weighted center of mass (see example script below)
• How to calculate other metrics related to justice and demography (https://fisherzachary.github.io/public/r-output.html#reock-score)

4) Select districts so that no two students have the same selection.  Examples of competitive voting districts include AZ-01, AZ-06, CA-13, IA-03 (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/competitive-districts-will-decide-control-house).  Examples of partisan-biased voting districts in swing states include FL-27, FL-28, GA-2, NV-4 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps/).

5) Scaffold the deliverables over several class sessions.

• Have students begin research of voting districts in class as a group activity, and submit drafts of deliverables in-between class sessions.
• Have students present the pseudocode of their centroid and population-weighted centroid calculations for one of their voting districts on a whiteboard and solicit feedback from other students.  Encourage them to document their revisions.

Provide students with the option of submitting a technical document or technical video that addresses the learning objectives above and provides evidence of:

• An understanding of how presidential voting districts are engineered.
• Quantitative and qualitative social and environmental justice metrics that inform presidential voting district borders.
• MATLAB outputs, calculations, and visualizations related to an analysis of voting district borders.
• Clear and well-formatted pseudocode that can be understood by engineering students not enrolled in ENGR 7.
• Clear explanation of why and how user-defined or built-in functions were used (including the use of loops, conditional statements, and visualizations).
• Description of the data used and how it was implemented in the MATLAB code (including formatting, data type, size, and units).
• Description of where data was used in the code and why.
• Active participation, peer review, and self-reflection.

Let_the_Composites_Speak_Using_Statics_to_Critically_Evaluate_Gerrymandering.pdf (Acrobat (PDF) 127kB Oct6 24)

https://www.cltfuture2040plan.com/content/equity-metric-4-environmental-justice

https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/

https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card-methodology

https://sdgs.un.org/goals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGLRJ12uqmk