Why so many elections in 2024? Chalk it up to the ‘beauty of math,’ says professor
Global News
Tuesday’s vote in the United States is just one of more than 70 national elections that will have taken place this year by the end of December.
Tuesday’s vote in the United States may be dominating social media feeds, but it is just one of more than 70 national elections that will have taken place this year by the end of December.
Mauritanians went to the polls in June, the same month Mexico elected its first female president and Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory in India. Azerbaijanis and Indonesians voted in February. Iceland goes to the polls on Nov. 30, Ghana on Dec. 7.
“This is the biggest election year in human history,” the United Nations Development Program says on its website. “Half of the world’s population — some 3.7 billion people — will have the opportunity to go to the polls in 72 countries.”
In Canada alone, four provinces held or will hold provincial elections this year: New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Nova Scotia.
For mathematician Rebecca Tyson, 2024 is a simple yet beautiful example of how periodic systems — even messy human ones — will briefly fall into step with one another.
“It’s something that looks amazing, but really, it’s just this interesting property of oscillators that every once in a while, they’ll all line up,” the University of British Columbia professor said. “It just happens. Which is pretty cool.”
Perhaps you’ve seen a video of a pendulum apparatus, where pendulums of different lengths hanging from a central rod are set swinging at different times and somehow seem to fall briefly into synch, making a coherent wave in unison. As the swinging continues, they scatter, falling back out of step.
This is an example of oscillators lining up, Tyson said in a recent interview. And this is roughly what happened with all these elections lining up in 2024.
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