Borda Meets Pascal

Authors

Marie K. Jameson, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Gregory Minton '08, Harvey Mudd CollegeFollow
Michael E. Orrison, Harvey Mudd CollegeFollow

Student Co-author

HMC Undergraduate

Document Type

Article

Department

Mathematics (HMC)

Publication Date

9-2008

Abstract

Every so often (especially in mathematics), unforeseen connections between different ideas arise and beg explanation. This happened to us when, in an effort to generalize the voting procedure known as the Borda count, we began to see vectors of the form (-1, 1), (1, -2, 1), (-1, 3, -3, 1), (1, -4, 6, -4, 1), and so on. As you might imagine, we were instantly intrigued by this unanticipated relationship with Pascal's triangle, and we quickly set out to find an explanation. This article describes some of our initial findings.

Comments

Publisher PDF posted with permission.

Rights Information

© 2008 Mathematical Association of America

Recommended Citation

Jameson, Marie K., Gregory Minton, and Michael E. Orrison. "Borda Meets Pascal." Math Horizons 16.1 (2008): 8-10, 23. Print.