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In this talk we use mathematics to look at these flaws and answer associated questions (eg. voting trends and gerrymandering). For a bit of light relief we will see how the same principles work in the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Malian city of Timbuktu is one of the world's oldest seats of learning and has an intellectual legacy of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, coming from three great West African desert empires. These manuscripts offer a unique window into their history. This lecture will look at how their study can be used to advance our knowledge of the intellectual history of the premodern world.