Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 23h

Industrial enginering professor Don Ratliff makes an appearance on This American Life, sort of

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

My Other Self

Podcast Episode · This American Life · 10/12/2025 · 1h

podcasts.apple.com

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Reposted by Austin Buchanan

Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.bsky.social · 1d

For nearly 80 years, an algorithm called the simplex method has been one of the most widely used tools for when a logistical decision needs to be made under complex constraints. A new update makes it faster than ever. www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

Researchers Discover the Optimal Way To Optimize | Quanta Magazine

The leading approach to the simplex method, a widely used technique for balancing complex logistical constraints, can’t get any better.

www.quantamagazine.org

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

Tagging @sophie.huiberts.me

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

Our code and results are available on GitHub. github.com/maralshahmiz... #orms

GitHub - maralshahmizad/Political-Districting-to-Maximize-Whole-Counties

Contribute to maralshahmizad/Political-Districting-to-Maximize-Whole-Counties development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

Finally, we conduct a case study for Tennessee's state house districts and find that the plaintiffs' case in Wygant v. Lee could have been even stronger if our optimization methods had assisted in the drawing of demonstration plans.

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

Our approach provides easy-to-understand optimality proofs suitable for courts and laypeople. Specifically, it produces a set family with the property that at least one county from each set must be split. This is depicted as a county-level map in which a curve encircles each set.

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

The main problem decides which counties to keep whole, and the subproblem coarsens the selected counties and then seeks a feasible plan. We apply the approach to all congressional and legislative instances across the USA, generating plans that are provably optimal.

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

To answer this question, we propose integer programming techniques based on combinatorial Benders decomposition.

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

We consider a fundamental question in political districting: How many counties can be kept whole (i.e., not split across multiple districts), while satisfying basic criteria like contiguity and population balance?

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 1d

[new paper] Political districting to maximize whole counties, coauthored with Maral Shahmizad

github.com/maralshahmiz...

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 2d

For posterity—I later realized that a lower case v works better 😅

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 2d

Now that the kid’s asleep, dad gets to play with the birthday gifts #orms

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 4d

For those with LaTeX allergies, try Typst?

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 5d

She’s an industrial engineer!

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 5d

BREAKING: For her work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, María Corina Machado wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

María Corina Machado of Venezuela wins the Nobel Peace Prize

Opposition activist María Corina Machado of Venezuela has won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel committee praised her as a key figure in unifying Venezuela's political opposition.

bit.ly

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Reposted by Austin Buchanan

Rick Hasen @rickhasen.bsky.social · 6d

October 16 Safeguarding Democracy Project Webinar: “Redistricting and Re-Redistricting Controversies and the 2026 Election” electionlawblog.org?p=152405

October 16 Safeguarding Democracy Project Webinar: "Redistricting and Re-Redistricting Controversies and the 2026 Election" #ELB

Thursday, October 16 Redistricting and Re-Redistricting Controversies and the 2026 Elections (webinar) 12:15pm-1:15pm PTRegister here.Guy-Uriel Charles, Harvard Law School, Moon Duchin, Director, Data...

electionlawblog.org

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Reposted by Austin Buchanan

Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing @simonsinstitute.bsky.social · 8d

Congratulations to Thomas Rothvoss and Lang Liu, the inaugural winners of the Trevisan Prize at Bocconi University.

cs.unibocconi.eu/trevisan-pri...

Trevisan Prize 2025 – Winners

cs.unibocconi.eu

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Reposted by Austin Buchanan

NetScience @netscience.bsky.social · 14d

Network Science, and three of its avengers, featured in the latest @veritasium.bsky.social video (one of the largest youtube channels for Science education)!! youtu.be/CYlon2tvywA?... @stevenstrogatz.com Duncan Watts @barabasi.bsky.social

Something Strange Happens When You Trace How Connected We Are

YouTube video by Veritasium

youtu.be

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 14d

TIL that Fruit Bats redid the entire Smashing Pumpkins album Siamese Dream youtu.be/E8jDhs5MuvE?...

Rocket

YouTube video by Fruit Bats - Topic

youtu.be

Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 15d

“Pawpaw fruits, like soursop, guanabana, sweetsop, sugar apple, cherimoya, and custard apple, contain neurotoxins that may cause a neurodegenerative disease.”

nutritionfacts.org/video/do-not...

Do Not Eat Pawpaws | NutritionFacts.org

Pawpaw fruits, like soursop, guanabana, sweetsop, sugar apple, cherimoya, and custard apple, contain neurotoxins that may cause a neurodegenerative disease.

nutritionfacts.org

Reposted by Austin Buchanan

Chris Kenny, PhD @chriskenny.bsky.social · 17d

Yeah, I have fair point. I do all of my journal writing in Quarto, so that I can swap between formats, which lets me write Quarto => Typst. If a journal requires LaTeX, you just swap the engine and Quarto produces the LaTeX file.

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 19d

The journals that I normally submit to will often accept pdf files for the review process, but want .tex source files once the paper is accepted 🫠 Have you dealt with that before?

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · 26d

When did HGTV hire Xzibit?

Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · Sep 13

Reminded me of a story from one of von Neumann’s biographies farkasdilemma.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/j...

John von Neumann’s dog

From page 311 of Norman Macrae’s biography of John Von Neumann: Johnny then appointed Julian Bigelow as chief engineer after an interview that caught some of the mood of the project. It is re…

farkasdilemma.wordpress.com

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · Aug 30

On INFORMS Connect, Austin Saragih (MIT) advertised their new Python package (SCGraph) for accurate distances and shortest paths in *real* road networks (and rail, maritime, multimodal). #orms

Getting Started: github.com/connor-makowski/scgraph
Paper and Tutorial: ssrn.com/abstract=5388845

SCGraph: A Dependency-Free Python Package for Road, Rail, and Maritime Shortest Path Routing Generation and Distance Estimation

SCGraph (Supply Chain Graph) is a dependency-free Python toolkit that provides fully offline, accurate multimodal routing and network-based distance estimation

ssrn.com

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Austin Buchanan @austinlbuchanan.bsky.social · Aug 23

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue

Demagogue - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org