Your professional answer/help *NOT* needed urgently

[john_j]

Your opinion/input would be appreciated. As no one has tried to answer my question then, let me start...
I read an interesting article (see attached).

Science News “Mathematician answers Supreme Court Plea” by Julie Rehmever in June 2 issue.
So what’s fair?
An entire field of mathematics is devoted to answering just this kind of question. For example, take the classic “I cut, you choose” method of dividing cake: If I cut a cake into two pieces I’d be equally happy with, and you pick which of the two you like better, then neither of us will prefer the other person’s piece to the one we have. The division will be fair in that sense even if our priorities are different. For example, I might really want the rose made of frosting, while you might care only about the size of your piece.
Landau and his collaborators, students Ilona Yershov and Oneil Reid of the City College of New York, realized that the mathematics of fair division could be used to solve the redistricting problem. They used a variation on another cake-cutting method: A third party wields the knife, moving left to right across the cake until one of us calls out, “Stop!” when it seems that both sides are equally good. Then the person who called out gets the left piece and the other gets the right one.
The researchers proposed that a variation of this method be used to divide the state into two regions such that neither political party preferred the other’s region. From there, each party would divide up its own region however it liked.
At first blush, this plan doesn’t seem to solve the problem at all. After all, if one party has only 40 percent of the vote, why should it get a full half of the control of the process of dividing the state into districts?
But the mathematicians showed that equally shared control will lead to about the right outcome even if the parties get very different proportions of the votes. If Democrats get only 40 percent of the vote, they can divide up their half of the state to get at most 80 percent of the seats in that region. If the Republicans get all the seats in their half, that means the Democrats would get about 40 percent of the total seats, which corresponds to their percentage of the total vote anyway.
“The idea is to set up the rules of the game so that cheating isn’t really possible,” Landau says.
Landau points out that any restrictions ordinarily applied to the entire state would continue to be applied to the two half-states. So, for example, districts would continue to be required to have approximately equal populations, and the Voting Rights Act would continue to require that for both half-states, the majority of the population in some districts be ethnic minorities.
This fair division method offers the alluring possibility that each party may feel it got the better deal. The reason goes back to the cake: If I care most about the rose made of frosting and you care most about the size of your piece, we each may think our piece superior to the other’s. Similarly, Landau points out, one political party might particularly want to be able to win the district with a stadium in it, while the other party cared more about a district with an important donor.
The team presented its findings in January at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, D.C., and the research will appear in an upcoming issue of Social Choice and Welfare.
Political scientist David Epstein of Columbia University praised the approach as innovative, but said it’s unlikely to be politically feasible. “The idea that any subset of people is going to have 100 percent dictatorial control of any portion of any state is totally incompatible with the democratic process,” he says. Still, he believes the idea could be useful in other settings, such as perhaps for sharing power within a corporation.
Landau points out that in the current scheme, the ruling party has nearly dictatorial control already, and his scheme assures that that control can’t be used unfairly.

[john_j]

Well, as every one is shy to express his/her opinion then let me started it off..
I tried to use FV (future value) to calculate the interest rate (given the number of payment 22, regular payment, payment at beginning of year, present value 0, and the future value) by trial and error say 10%, 12%. Then used interpolation to get the supposed rate. Then applied the rate to calculate the FV for 8 years. The only thing that I am not sure is whether the insured amount should be separately calculated as it was static throughout the time. How should it be treated? Your input would be appreciated.

[john_j]

I thought the purpose of the forum is for people to discus and help you if you need an answer for. May be I am wrong?

[john_j]

deleted by Irish Blues - cross-spamming forums to draw attention to something you posted is not allowed; next time it will result in a ban.