Monday, December 19, 2016

New Python Project: Is there a way to build nonpartisan voting districts?

Gerrymandering  seems to make the news every couple of years and every couple of years I wander if there's a solution to the problem.  It seems that somebody should have figured out how to make fair and equitable congressional districts by now, right?  

I'm a little curious if something like that is possible using some geospatial analysis.  What are the roadblocks and what's stopping somebody from pulling this off?  Who knows?  It's an excuse to learn more about Python and its application to mapping and such.

How much experience do I have with Python and geospatial analysis?  none!  Well, I've done a little, but with esri's arcpy Python module.  This should be WAY harder, but a fun challenge. 

Poking around the internet, it looks like Python needs some packages to do what I want (or at least get me started).  A place called SciPy can hook me up.  

They allow installing via pip, which I've done a couple of times in the past.  They even tell me exactly what to type.  So, to Command Prompt we go and we'll do the install.


Easy peasy.  Next time, we'll see what we've installed and how it can help us.