Journal: News & Comment

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Schrödinger's election

If you haven't heard of it, read about Schrödinger's cat* (and here is a translation of the original paper).

A study of ballots in Florida in the 2000 U.S. presidential election indicates that it was, even now, Schrödinger's election. Perhaps no one can ever really know who won there, because, as one statistician put it, "the variability of the vote counts -- the possible error -- would be larger than the margin of victory."

* I didn't notice until I read through the Web page, but the cartoon on it is by an old friend of mine from university, Ken Otter, who now has a Ph.D. and studies birds for a living. Small world. Or small Web, anyway.

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