Dear Applied Statistics Community, This week we present Andrew C. Thomas, G-4 Department of Statistics, who will present his work on "Symmetry and Competition in State Legislative Election Systems". Andrew has provided the following abstract for his presentation: Drawing of legislative districts has historically been conducted by the legislators themselves; recently, some states have appointed redistricting commissions, the members of which cannot run for seats in the legislature for a period afterwards. I demonstrate that current methods, in particular the Gelman-King model and the JudgeIt R package, can easily diagnose the state of an electoral map given previous electoral conditions. In particular, competition increases in states with commissions, but the impact on symmetry is as yet unclear. I conclude with a discussion on techniques to improve the resolution and measurement of electoral symmetry within states. Please join us this Wednesday at 12noon for the presentation and a light lunch. We hold the workshop in Room N-354 of CGIS-Knafel (1737 Cambridge St). I hope that you will be able to attend Cheers, Justin Grimmer