Tools, Games, & Resources
Law of Large Numbers Visualizer
Two key results of probability theory are the Weak and Strong Laws of Large Numbers. In essence, they say a large number of random variables can (probably) have an average close to the mean of the distribution.
Click here for an interactive visualization
So... You Want to be a Gerrymanderer?
The idea of cleverly picking groups to advantage your own interests sounds like something straight out of a board game. To understand gerrymandering, it might be best to try it for yourself!
Click here to out-gerrymander an opponent
Centering & Variation
We care what values a dataset takes on. As a summary of that information, we often see what the data is surrounded and how spread out the data is from there.
Resources:
Below are some open-source data sources that I have used personally and find to be easy to use.
- “Redistricting Data Hub” (https://redistrictingdatahub.org/) – Collection of datasets for every US state at mostly every level of granularity necessary.
- “Data.gov” (https://data.gov/) – A home for all the open data available from the US government
- “Network Data Repository” (https://networkrepository.com/) – A hub with specifically network-based datasets of all sorts (e.g. biological, social, transportation, etc.)