[EM] Proportional preferential voting

[David Catchpole]

Well, more or less until this century, "randomness" was probabilistic
behaviour- that is, even when completely sure of all the inputs and
variables, one was unsure of the outcome. The most accepted principle of
this kind of "randomness" nowadays comes from quantum physics- witness
Schroedinger's cat, which can't make up its mind whether it's dead or not
until it is observed.

Non-linear systems (chaos theory) changed all this.
The fact that systems exist in the real world which are more or less
deterministic (complete knowledge of the inputs ideally leads to complete
knowledge ofthe outcome) but which vary widely and (important) in a
folded, non-monotonic way over a small difference in inputs. This is
"chaotic" or "mathematical" randomness. A good example is where the
leather dude in "Jurrasic Park" demonstrates a drip of water falling over
a vein in the human hand.

The best example of mathematical randomness is the digit value for an
irrational number, say pi. 3,1,4, etc., if they were graphed against the
power value of the digits, 0,-1,-2, etc., would demonstrate a chaotic and
mathematically random pattern.

On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Wiseman, Julian wrote:

> Do feel welcome to define the two types of randomness, carefully
> distinguishing one from the other. 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:	David Catchpole [SMTP:s349436 at student.uq.edu.au]
> > Sent:	Monday, October 04, 1999 7:30 AM
> > To:	'election-methods-list at eskimo.com'
> > Subject:	RE: [EM] Proportional preferential voting
> > 
> > On Wed, 22 Sep 1999, Wiseman, Julian wrote:
> > 
> > > Indeed, Lord Weedon almost but not quites manages to conclude that
> > > non-monotonic systems have embedded randomness -- something not widely
> > > acknowledged. 
> > 
> > That's chaotic randomness, not probabilistic randomness. Lovely stuff. A
> > small range of perturbations will lead to a wide range of outcomes.
> 
>