Chops and Erosity - Great Lakes Style

[traininthedistance]

I wonder how the map below would score under the new Muon2 scoring system. No township or city chops other than Detroit (although the avoidance of a chop between MI-10 and MI-11 was at the cost I suspect of more state or US highway chops, so not sure if the avoidance of a chop helps or hurts the score; ditto for the line between MI-10 and MI-09), no chops of major metro areas other than Grand Rapids and Detroit which are unavoidable, all CD's within a 1% deviation, and if competitiveness is a less than 5 PVI, everything is  competitive other than the two black CD's and MI-05 and MI-07 (well MI-02 has a Pub PVI of 5.02% per the 2008 numbers). I don't remember what the cut off was for an uber competitive CD. Was that 1.5 PVI or less? If so, MI-04 and MI-06 are uber competitive.


 

I wonder if there's a less erose way to draw the metro Detroit CDs (don't have the time to fiddle around ATM but might look at it at some point), but the rest of the state looks quite reasonable at a first glance.

[traininthedistance]

So, I unfortunately checked out of this discussion for awhile and it seems to have gotten sufficiently weedy that doing so was a mistake.  And it has also sufficiently moved on from Michigan.  

But!  Despite that, I have a map that I'd be curious to see scored.  









Salient points:

* No munis chopped besides Detroit; one subunit within Detroit is chopped.  Both Detroit districts are within 51-53% BVAP.
* No microchops anywhere.  I've never really cottoned to them, TBH.  A chop is a chop is a chop.  I do wonder if using them on the 1-4 border might sufficiently decrease erosity to be worth it.
* The Detroit metro lines are, I think, pretty damn clean.
* One macrochop is saved outside of the Detroit area at the expense of some more erosity in the southwest– the standard (but high-inequality) "pretty" district 6 is sacrificed and a GR-burbs-to Benton Harbor thing put in its place for the sake of one fewer chop and nicer lines in Central MI.
*It's even possible to lower the county chops by sending the Flint-based district into Livingston rather than the Thumb– but doing so will increase inequality and create a UCC chop, so let's leave that thought for another map.

The one thing I don't like about this map is the split of Saginaw, I mean, something needs to be chopped and the actual Tri-Cities are all together, at least, but it's still a little sad.  But, hot damn, that District 8.

[traininthedistance]

I see a GR precinct next to Wyoming that is in CD-3. If I put it in CD-2 with the rest of GR CD-3 goes outside the deviation limit. Let me know if you want the (micro)chop of GR or if you have a revised Kent for scoring.

Your chop of Lapeer (35,666) is just barely over the threshold for a macrochop (35,298). That's going to run up the erosity score, so let me know if you want a revision there, too.

Kent is easily revised; I'll have it up soon.

I'm clearly following this discussion even worse than I thought I was if that threshold in Lapeer actually makes a difference.  Ugh.  I figured it was just a chop already, didn't realize you could get rewarded for making it just a tiny bit smaller.  This one's going to take possibly some time, because any fix will likely increase inequality, as well as other erosity thresholds (by having the Lapeer part of 10 touch Sanilac, or at least more townships within the District 5 part of Lapeer, which if I'm following correctly both will bump the score up?)

[traininthedistance]

Two revised Kents for the price of one.



District 2 is -3124, District 3 is +836.  Very similar to the original, just a touch more inequality.



District 2 is +226, District 3 is -2514.

This one keeps the inequality better under control than the other one, and as a bonus Holland is all together in one district (as it usually isn't because it spans a particularly chop-prone county line), but 2 looks more erose, by the eyeball test at least.

[traininthedistance]

Here's a post from the earlier thread on MI chops (linked in the OP) that touches on issues in train's map. The first map shows some arrangements using the same CD 2, 3, and 8 as in train's map. The macrochop of Jackson is avoided using east-west strips. The macrochop of Saginaw is avoided by linking Bay to the thumb as train was perhaps thinking.

The second map answers train's query about erosity between CD 1 and CD 4. In train's plan the segment between those two has an erosity of 10 and CD 1 has a deviation of -530. In the second map below the segment has an erosity of 9 and CD 1 has a deviation of only -49. It would be interesting to see if microchops could do better than that.

How much worse is the erosity on the southern Michigan strips as compared to my Jackson split?  And it seems like one of those strips is over 0.5% off anyways, so there's still a chop to contend with anyway.

I was playing around with putting most of Sanilac instead of Lapeer into the Detroit area; I feel like local sentiment would prefer Lapeer rather than breaking off a Thumb county but this might be a case where the numbers and local sentiment are in conflict, if you can do it better with Sanilac instead.

[traininthedistance]

There are two state highway paths that connect Sanilac to Lapeer: MI 53 and MI 90. Mapquest say that MI-53 is shorter, so that is the primary link. In a macrochop both links would count. In a simple chop only the primary link counts, though that could be an open question I posed wrt Torie's IL map. If the primary link stays within the district at the county line, then erosity doesn't increase for a simple chop.

Yeah, that doesn't help; the link does in fact change districts at the county line.  (I guess it helps prevent 10 from really touching Tuscola, though?)

EDIT:



I also switched Zilwaukee from 5 to 4 to lower inequality since 5 needs to take on more people.  4 is +1,113; 5 is +243, 10 is -979.

Still a little unclear on the rationale for distinguishing between macrochops and non-macro chops.

[traininthedistance]

How much worse is the erosity on the southern Michigan strips as compared to my Jackson split?  And it seems like one of those strips is over 0.5% off anyways, so there's still a chop to contend with anyway.

In your map the CD 6-7 segment has an erosity of 9, 8 in Jackson and 1 for Hillsdale-Lenawee. The CD 7-8 segment has an erosity of 2 along the Jackson border. The CD 6-8 segment has an erosity of 4 for the usual county links. That's a total of 15.

If CD 6 runs from Kalamazoo to Monroe along the southern border and CD 7 goes from Battle Creek to Ann Arbor, a chop of Monroe including Milan and its surrounding twp puts the two CDs deviations at -1871 and -1951. The Monroe chop adds a link between the two pieces, but the highway link between Washtenaw and Monroe is no longer servered, so the CD 6-7 segment has and erosity of 7. The CD 7-8 segment has an erosity of 5, and there is no CD 6-8 segment. The total erosity is reduced to 12 by avoiding the macrochop.

If microchops don't count as chops, and thus don't create a bridge county, you can do the same as above but shift Litchfield and its surrounding twp in Hillsdale. That eliminates the chop and reduces erosity. A microchop in Kalamazoo could also eliminate the chop, but has one higher erosity than the Hillsdale one, since it can't go at the primary link without exceeding 0.5%. For this purpose, I assume that to qualify as a microchop, it must not chop county subdivisions.

Several questions:

1) How are you getting 2 from the bolded part?  Wouldn't it just be 1, for Jackson-Ingham?
2) Wouldn't the modified 6-7 segment have an erosity of at least 8? (Barry-Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo-Calhoun, Calhoun-Branch, Calhoun-Hillsdale, Hillsdale-Jackson, Jackson-Lenawee, Lenawee-Washtenaw, Washtenaw-Monroe)?  I guess, also, with the Monroe chop, that doesn't add any further erosity somehow?  Even though it's over 0.5% of a district?  But only since it's going along a particular road (that is not even necessarily the only state route conning those two counties, which is apparently why a Kalamazoo microchop of Ross Twp. is somehow worse?)

Even putting all that aside, I guess we've stumbled upon a situation where the rules are actually preferring more elongated shapes that "feel" more erose to the non-initiated.  Interesting.

For the record, I feel very strongly that microchops should count as chops.

[traininthedistance]

Huh, I wonder how this split of 6/7 would fare:



There are 16,067 people in the CD-7 portion of Jackson, which I guess helps because it's not a macro chop anymore?  

Also, not having a 7/8 border, or the line right along Jackson City (since you get penalized for having lines right along small cities/boroughs, even when the line is reasonably straight) should help with chop counts in comparison to my first map.

[traininthedistance]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As I responded to Torie, I can be persuaded to go in that direction, but then the inequality score should have the same weight in decision making as chop and erosity scoes.

I've always tended to have a lower tolerance for inequality than folks like jimrtex, so that would certainly get my vote.  The three-pronged Pareto test you mentioned seems at first blush to be an approach I'd strongly approve of.

Thanks for all the other explanations; think I've got it straight now (well, I still need to take a closer look at Illinois regarding the Kalamazoo point, but that's a minor point and I trust I can figure it out without any more help).

...

Taking all these tweaks and suggestions into account... here's Draft 2, new and improved:

MI train 2015A2








You'll note that I also found a super-low-inequality configuration for 1 and 4 (not necessarily the lowest-erosity, mind, but lower than what I had before), and shuffled a precinct or two in Detroit to lower inequality between 13 and 14.  I suspect that one can lower inequality in Oakland at the expense of erosity, but this is enough maps for today.  Alternate Oaklands and 1/4 borders might be in the offing for tomorrow, though.

[traininthedistance]

Since a 0.5% variance is legal, in my view the "elbow room" afforded thereby should be used to reduce chops and erosity, including micro-chops. Thus I strongly dissent using it as a factor, except as a tie breaker. Such small population variations really do not raise any material public policy issue in my mind, except if done to make worse maps, rather than better perhaps.  And even then, competitiveness/reflection of state partisan balances, should be used as a tie breaker first (relegating population inequality to being only in play if maps are tied first on chops and erosity, and then further tied on political balance), as I am sure Train would agree.

I'd have to think on it some more; I admit to some frisson of satisfaction when I can get those deviances pretty low, and 0.5% isn't that low to my eyes, but I'm open to being convinced that it should be strictly secondary to those other factors.

Anyway, I'm an idiot and there's a strictly better 1/4 anyway, both on erosity and inequality:

MI train 2015A3


1 is +428, 4 is +155.

Now I'm done for the day.

[traininthedistance]

because I lose the double chop penalty for both Clinton and Kent counties, at the cost of an additional freebie microchop, at least vis a vis the chop score, thus tying Train's chop score.

Objection, your honor.  I am not on board with any chops being "freebies".

[traininthedistance]

Yes, I quite agree, and since my map has one micro-chop, and yours has none, that "saves" you map from biting the dust, if micro-chops are given a half point penalty (as I think they should).  But alas you still lose with this micro-chopless wonder:  

This despite the fact that your map has– to the naked eye– four chops outside of the Detroit UCC, and mine only has three.  I somehow doubt the public square, as you are so fond of putting it, would have an easy time following.  Very much a "gameable" situation, those "i-chops", n'est-ce pas?

In any case, I'll have a new map forthcoming soon which gets the chop count even lower.

[traininthedistance]

Well this part I do like. One of my desires is to crowdsource the development of maps, where people see plans as they are posted and work to improve them. I think that provides the utmost in transparency and public input to the process.

I admit I do prefer two small chops to one macrochop. I think that is driven by my observation that large counties can have their vote diluted or used to dilute other areas by deeply chopping them. Setting a policy goal that smaller chops are preferred tends to keep counties at their natural voting strength. Making that policy based on a hard cut helps defend the use of that policy to allow for greater inequality, since as I read Tennant it's the clear, concrete policy of WV that allowed for deviations from exact equality.

Speaking of inequality, Torie's latest offering has a range of 5983 which translates to an INEQUALITY of 11. In terms of Pareto, it doesn't knock out the earlier maps that have INEQUALITY of 10. I'll let Torie and train debate whether that's good for flexibility or not.

Well, I obviously have a rosier view of inequality as a co-equal factor with chops and erosity than Torie does– I take OMOV pretty seriously and think we should strive to get as close as practical.  Our disagreement on that point will be pretty predictable.

As for two small chops vs. one macro chop, I'd think that releasing the munis for a macrochop (thereby incurring a big erosity penalty) should be considered sufficient incentive to avoid the issues you worry about, even without double-counting things.

But, on any case, here's a new map that if I've calculated correctly cuts down two chops.  Rearranging things between the Flint, Tri-Cities, and Lansing districts allowed me to turn the Saginaw macrochop into a non-macro chop, at the expense of I think one erosity point in the Lansing district?  Also, by taking advantage of the rule you pointed out w/r/t Kent, I had sufficient flexibility to clean up the lines in Wayne County and split Detroit entirely on community lines, so not only does the chop count go down but presumably erosity as well.

MI train 2015B




Districts 13 and 14 are 51.4 and 51.1% BVAP; inequality ranges from -2555 (District 6, unchanged) to +2893 (District 9), so inequality is still 10.

[traininthedistance]

Okay... let's back this up for a second.  I think there's a fast one being pulled here.

How many chops, exactly, does this map have?  Leave aside the Detroit UCC for a moment (the chops inside it, plus the necessary chop of Lapeer- just ignore that part of the map for a second), there are four chopped counties, and the Grand Rapids UCC is by necessity chopped.  Torie's decision to make the Kent chop a non-macro chop at the expense of putting a chop into Clinton should, certainly, decrease erosity since it means the munis don't get released.

But... uh... that doesn't decrease chops.  And shouldn't it actually increase chops even more, since the Lansing UCC is, in fact, also being chopped here?  So outside of the Detroit UCC (which let's hold constant for a moment), Torie has four county chops and two UCC chops, for a total of six whereas my map has a total of four: the Grand Rapids UCC and only three county chops.

...

EDIT: I see part of it; from muon's scoring of Torie's last map, apparently a UCC chop doesn't actually count as a chop unless it's a macrochop?  That's a tres gameable hitch that I don't think I like one bit.  And still only decrements Torie's chop count by one anyway, not two.

[traininthedistance]

I have only four chops, because yes, neither Grand Rapids nor the Lansing UCC's are macro-chopped. You have four chops, three counties, plus a macro-chop of the Grand Rapids UCC. I agree with a one penalty point for a macro-chop of any UCC I think. Why? Because if not, UCC's, with their big populations, became vulnerable to being a macro-chop dumping ground, because you have so much flexibility when using them, to get rid of smaller chops elsewhere (that was the game I initially played with my Kent macrochop, because it was useful to at once make MI-02 and MI-04 chop-less (MI-04 on its west side), while also reducing erosity). That is my sense of it. Indeed, a macro-chop of any county (unless it is internal within the a multi-county UCC (that should get just one penalty point like any other county), should probably be a two pointer, although almost all counties capable of being macro-chopped will be in  a UCC, since if a single county, that means it needs a population of in excess of 70,000, and probably more like 100,000+, since with 70,000 or so, to be a macro-chopped it would need to be just about exactly bifurcated, which is unlikely to happen.  

Your Grand Rapids UCC is, in fact, macrochopped, even if Kent itself is not macrochopped.  Remember that the UCC starts out as a super-county; a Grand Rapids macrochop is literally unavoidable.

I would argue, in addition, that your Clinton chop ought to count as a chop of the Lansing UCC, as well. Isn't that the whole point of UCCs in the first place?

[traininthedistance]

Recall these are the implementation effects of the UCCs in this model.

=Chops in multi-county UCCs got higher scores over a base value depending on the excess number of districts.
=Chops in multi-county UCCs would count double if they chopped a county and were sufficiently large.
=Chops in multi-county UCCs could not count double if they otherwise maintained whole counties.
=Chops in single-county UCCs could not count double, but could trigger greater erosity if a macrochop was present.
=Avoiding chops in UCCs smaller than a single district could be rewarded with lower erosity (for example Lansing in MI).
=The threshold to determine if a chop could count double was set at the same level as the macrochop to avoid introducing a separate threshold from the one used to trigger the use of subunits to measure erosity.

I personally think that a whole county chop is better than a partial county chop, and I think that most public viewers would see it that way, too. But I also think a small chop is better than a big chop. What this system does is balance those two such that a whole county chop into a UCC is equal to a small chop into a UCC county. A large chop that is not whole county is judged to be worse than either of those other alternatives and gets a higher score.

I think that's a good balance, but others may not. What weight would you give to those three scenarios?

Basically I am on board with those effects with the exception that I would strike the "and were sufficiently large" clause from part 2.  I'm fine with macrochops triggering erosity penalties (and thereby being discouraged), but I do think that for chop counts (single or double), the KISS principle of "a chop is a chop is a chop" is the road I'd take.

[traininthedistance]

Anyway, this illustrates again a problem with the pareto optimality regime. A map can win with a massive dose of additional erosity, just in order to lose a chop or two. That is what we are seeing here. I am losing a ton of erosity points, just to get rid of two or three chops, including in one iteration, a fair amount of erosity just to get rid of one micro-chop, and in the case of Detroit, massively more erosity (that should not be rewarded). So a total score concept makes some sense, or to be pareto optimal, the variation in the total score cannot exceed a certain amount.

This doesn't faze me, in large part because chops just fundamentally bother me a lot more than erosity.  And, also, because a lot of that erosity is, to be frank, artifical erosity, in particular the fact that a fairly straight line within Oakland which passes by small-sized towns and boros is more "erose" than something which heat-seeks the larger square towns, even if the actual squiggliness is not appreciably different.  (Also, outside of metros, when district lines are cut across a perfect grid of counties rather than offset rows of squares).

What I do take as a potential problem, though, and this is a backtrack from other things I've said earlier, is trying to use inequality as a co-equal factor and then gerrymandering to all hell with perfectly equal population.  That would be an issue, and yeah, does present an issue with the inequality measures.  What to do about that, other than just accede to your idea that inequality below a bright-line threshold just shouldn't matter?

This is perhaps a bit of a kludge, but let me float this trial balloon: perhaps, the inequality and erosity scores be combined into one number which can then be set against chops (which I continue to consider the most important factor in my mapmaking) in a two-prong pareto test.  How to balance the two would take some trial and error; I would certainly give erosity the lion's share of the impact but exactly how much is an open question.

[traininthedistance]

Recall these are the implementation effects of the UCCs in this model.

=Chops in multi-county UCCs got higher scores over a base value depending on the excess number of districts.
=Chops in multi-county UCCs would count double if they chopped a county and were sufficiently large.
=Chops in multi-county UCCs could not count double if they otherwise maintained whole counties.
=Chops in single-county UCCs could not count double, but could trigger greater erosity if a macrochop was present.
=Avoiding chops in UCCs smaller than a single district could be rewarded with lower erosity (for example Lansing in MI).
=The threshold to determine if a chop could count double was set at the same level as the macrochop to avoid introducing a separate threshold from the one used to trigger the use of subunits to measure erosity.

I personally think that a whole county chop is better than a partial county chop, and I think that most public viewers would see it that way, too. But I also think a small chop is better than a big chop. What this system does is balance those two such that a whole county chop into a UCC is equal to a small chop into a UCC county. A large chop that is not whole county is judged to be worse than either of those other alternatives and gets a higher score.

I think that's a good balance, but others may not. What weight would you give to those three scenarios?

Basically I am on board with those effects with the exception that I would strike the "and were sufficiently large" clause from part 2.  I'm fine with macrochops triggering erosity penalties (and thereby being discouraged), but I do think that for chop counts (single or double), the KISS principle of "a chop is a chop is a chop" is the road I'd take.

So you would judge all three scenarios equally, right? The original UCC surcharge idea (ca 2013) would cost any plan that chopped Clinton 2 points. My model reduced that penalty for small chops of Clinton, but left the large chop penalty at 2. To meet what I think you are saying for Lansing I can imagine a statement like this: "The UCC penalty only exists if there is not another county chop penalty that would give that same result."

If try to apply that to the other UCC's I foresee difficulties. Consider the GR UCC. My statement would imply that a clean split along the Kent/Ottawa line counts the same as a chop through Kent. What if the plan chops both Kent and Ottawa, between three districts - there would be already 2 county chops, so how does one assess a penalty for the extra district in the UCC? That would seem like the UCC minimum of two really didn't have any effect.

Now consider the Detroit UCC. I can draw a plan that has the same number of divisions of each of the counties as the offerings here so far, yet has 7 districts instead of 6. Oakland already has one chop more than the minimum. Given that, how does one determine whether the county chop penalty eliminates the need for an extra UCC penalty?

I would suggest that the county chop penalty eliminates the need for UCC penalties in single-county UCCs, and not otherwise.

[traininthedistance]

having population inequality in trivial amounts to get much better, and much more chopless maps, I think is important, and I am confident that the public will agree.

I agree with this, more or less–I just don't really think of districts that are four digits off of ideal "trivially" unequal, I guess.  They might be equal enough to pass muster, and if it saves us chops then that is a tradeoff I will easily take, but my personal calculus will take a couple points of erosity (not chops!) if it gets inequality down some.

[traininthedistance]

It is less than a macro-chop Jimtex (however defined), and just why absent a microchop, should UCC's be sacred cows, since the number of votes detached is a relatively trivial percentage? Also the Clinton chop is of rural areas, so they are probably pleased to be detached from the Green, egghead/intellectual, quasi Marxist, gay loving, God-less, cultural cesspool, and bureaucratic, public employee (government and public universities) tax loving parasitical types to boot, that Lansing is all about, in favor of being moved into the culture of the more traditional and steady practical Dutch heavy, into practical money making, and growing the economic pie rather than shrinking it, folks in the Grand Rapids UCC.

This post was just for fun. It has a mild point (the amount of population is small enough to just chill and it really is rural, which is why the population is small), and then I went ballistic, trolling my butt off, and I loved it. Maybe it will earn me my first death point.

Eh, I chuckled.  I'm sure that's an accurate description of the mindset of plenty of folks.  Whether their perception has any relationship to reality, well that's another kettle of coconuts. 

In an absolutely ideal process, yeah I could see how maybe we don't want to keep the rural portions of UCCs to be sacred cows... but an absolutely ideal process would also try to re-introduce CoI measures, or at least take into account things like combined statistical areas (such that, say, you'd get dinged for separating Saginaw from Midland and Bay City, or somesuch) and well-recognized rural cultural regions (like the three counties of the Thumb).

In the absence of such loosey-goosey "Trojan horses" (to use a phrase), then it's for the best that we hold a strict line on what few proxies for CoI that we actually have at our disposal.  That's my theory at least.

[traininthedistance]

Quick question that I missed the answer to: if, say, you have a large multi-district UCC, and you have the minimum number of districts in it, but more than one of those districts crosses the UCC boundary, does that give you any extra penalty?  What if, say, there's a county that is not part of the UCC but is literally only accessible through the UCC, does that get mulliganed or not?

Spoiler alert: in particular I'm thinking about various ways to draw the Pittsburgh area.  It has to take at least parts of four districts but do three of them need to be entirely within the UCC, especially with non-UCC Greene in the corner mucking things up?

[traininthedistance]

My interpretation is that you count the number of districts in the UCC. Whether or not those districts spill into other counties, or even other UCCs doesn't affect the counting within the UCC. Basically, put blinders on and just address each UCC on its own. It's no different than with county chops, where it doesn't matter how many other counties a district extends into, one just focuses on the county in question.

Excellent.  That certainly helps one draw nicer lines in Western PA (take a look at District 4!), if it's okay to have two districts span the UCC boundary.  

To wit:









Salient features:

* Within Philadelphia, all the lines are along ward boundaries.  The portion of PA-8 is a macrochop (as is necessary); the portion of PA-7 is not.  PA-2 is 60% BVAP; PA-1 is minority-majority by total population, but not by VAP.
* Obviously, the split of Allegheny and Berks are macrochops, and the portion of PA-7 in Montgomery is also one– these are all necessary.  Every other chop is an I-chop (though Carbon and Bedford are both in the ~6K range, which is pretty small).
* PA-9, without the roughly ~6K of people from Bedford, is tantalizingly close to being whole counties, as it would be -4,800 or so.  I tried to see if you could get the other deviations low enough such that it could fit into a 1% range, but no dice, not without chops elsewhere. (The combo Lehigh+Northampton+Carbon is just a tiny bit further away, as well.)
* There is, I'm pretty sure, a configuration of districts in the T which would lower inequality at the expense of erosity.  District 3 would even look prettier, but 10 and 5 would be a *lot* worse.  I think it also might have required another chop, or turning the SW I-chops into a macrochop, or something else?  There's a reason I abandoned it.  In any case, I might reconstruct it later but I doubt it would be preferred.
* Really, I think that the general shape of this map is hard to beat, though fine-tuning might still be possible.  The biggest point of contention, obviously, would be whether to split Berks or Lancaster between 6 and 16.  Without exhaustively researching every configuration (the proliferation of tiny boros in PA make infra-county erosity measures a BEAR), the erosity seems similar, and this arrangement should better respect the fact that Berks is part of the Philadelphia CSA, something that isn't technically a part of the UCC framework but IMO deserves consideration somehow.

[traininthedistance]

Oh, hey, here's a better Berks:



I think, if I've counted correctly, the infra-Berks erosity drops from 15 to 14 (though I guess technically that's clawed back by the Montgomery-Berks line now counting twice?), and it looks prettier, and the inequality is even lower!  6 is +255 and 16 is +90.  Of course, under the current scoring there's no reward for getting closer to even for anything except the furthest outliers, which makes that irrelevant.  Should it be irrelevant?  I don't think it should be, though switching to a different inequality measure (perhaps the average of the deviations or something could work?) is not necessarily a hill I care to die on.

[traininthedistance]

Train, do you think you did your best to minimize your intra Philly UCC erosity zoom score between CD's? It may be that the PA-08 jut into Philly is not a macrochop, which gives you a freebie, which is itself an issue in the scoring system (maybe all chops into a county except microchops, should be zoomed, but penalized only for the excess subunit connector cuts (Philly hoods in this case) over the minimum for the size of the chop), but I wonder about PA-07 going into Berks rather than Chester.  

The PA-8 part in Philly is a macrochop; no getting around the fact that PA-8 is Bucks plus a macrochop of something else.  The lines were drawn there to minimize chops rather than erosity, the wards are pretty large out in the far Northeast which decreases flexibility.  Presumably you could lower the erosity by chopping one of the big wards or something instead.

PA-7 doesn't go anywhere near Berks, that's the Delco district. Its chops are more erosity-minimizing, with the Chester and Philly bits non-macro, while the remainder of Montgomery that's too big for PA-13 is, yes, a macrochop, but a pretty obvious and clean one.

It is very likely that a different line between 1 and 2 could score better, but I wanted to keep the traditional Broad Street divide for the time being.  

[traininthedistance]

But that doesn't include the fix to CD 7. If it is a pure non-scoring microchop, then the above paragraph applies. If it is full scoring chop then it matters which of the three UCC choices I use. In Wayne or Eaton it creates an additional UCC chop as well as a county chop, but in the single-county UCC Kalamazoo, there would be no UCC chop. That seems strange to me. If it gets a fractional score as suggested by Torie, that leaves the question of the UCC penalty up in the air.

Hm.  You could probably guess that I'd advocate for microchops to score, and just score the same as any old chop, so that the above paragraph wouldn't apply.  There are a few possible fixes to what you find strange:

* perhaps microchops shouldn't incur the UCC penalty, unlike I-chops and macro chops (since I really haven't left any role for rewarding microchops in my thinking, this might be an opportunity to carve out a role for them after all)
* perhaps single-county UCCs should incur penalties for being chopped after all
* perhaps it's okay to live with that as an artifact of the scoring system

I"m honestly undecided as to which of the three is best.  Possibly need a day or two to mull it over- there's a part of me that wants to say Option 2 is the best, and single-county metros deserve some measure of protection as well, TBH.

...

I feel like this map is an even better test case, though, for that question I asked earlier regarding Pittsburgh and having multiple districts span the UCC boundary.  In Detroit, there are a full four districts which are partially within the UCC and without it.  That seems like... an abuse of the system to my eyes.  (As well as a traveling chop, which I guess is no big deal anymore, but I remember was verboten in really early attempts at these rules.)  Almost feel like it makes a case for maybe not having unlimited flexibility in that arena, and dinging maps that don't try to keep as many UCC districts as they can entirely within the UCC.