Joe Parsons

Renowned mathematician Donald Saari will deliver the sixth annual UNC Asheville Parsons' Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 29, in UNC Asheville's Lipinsky Auditorium. Saari's talk on voting theory, "We Vote, but Do We Elect Whom We Really Want?" is hosted by UNC Asheville's Mathematics Department. The event is free and open to the public.

Saari examined America's voting system and unearthed an unexpected statistic: 70 percent of three-person political races result in mathematically questionable outcomes. In his talk, Saari will discuss why the results of voting procedures are often not what voters really wanted. He will identify the culprit for this problem and will discuss how this can be resolved.

Saari is the preeminent expert on the mathematics of voting, including an analysis of voting methods and applications of chaos theory to voting. He has become a leading critic of the American electoral process and an advocate for voting procedures that more accurately reflect voters' choices. He serves as the director of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California at Irvine. Saari is the author of 10 books and a number of research papers and has given more than 500 talks. He is former chief editor of the American Mathematical Society's Bulletin journal and current member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Each year, UNC Asheville’s Parsons’ Lecture showcases well-known mathematicians who are able to explain their field of study to a general audience. The lecture is made possible by an endowment from an alumnus in honor of UNC Asheville Professor Emeritus Joe Parsons, who served in the Mathematics Department from 1952 to 1980.

For more information, call UNC Asheville's Mathematics Department at 828/251-6556.