[EM] a democratic approach to intractable optimizations

[Scott Ritchie]

On Sat, 2005-08-20 at 09:31 -0700, Simmons, Forest wrote:
> In a recent message, partly quoted below, Adam Tarr outlined an NP hard optimization approach to redistricting.  He suggested that a genetic optimization algorithm might be used for practical purposes.
> --------------------
> I beleive this is an NP problem, but a good genetic algorithm could
> come up with an acceptable solution given enough time to crank away.

Why not just try and solve the NP problem?  After all, we've got a few
years and the resources of an entire state to do it - maybe we could
form a giant district-calculating array out of all the electronic voting
machines when they're not being used for an election.

:),
Scott