Borda Count

[LAYTON Craig]

There's no reason we couldn't do something like that here, depending on how
many subscribers we currently have (we could suppliment results using people
we know that aren't on the mailing list).  Neutral things that everyone has
an opinion/preference on like favourite colour are best, because there isn't
much need to vote insincerely.

-----Original Message-----
From: Forest Simmons [mailto:fsimmons at pcc.edu]
Sent: Friday, 2 February 2001 10:50
To: LAYTON Craig
Cc: 'election-methods-list at eskimo.com'
Subject: RE: Borda Count


That's interesting. I wish we had more of these kinds of experiments with
real live people to help educate our intuition.

On Fri, 2 Feb 2001, LAYTON Craig wrote:

> Yes, the first one.
> 
> In relation to Borda, I remember an experiment we did in 1st year
political
> science, where all the students voted on the same thing (I think it was
> chocolate bars).  We used a number of voting systems, and had to vote
> sincerely and consistently across all the systems. The voting systems
were;
> first past the post, IRV, approval, borda and a rating system (out of
100).
> The voting pattern was really interesting (there were two dominant
factions,
> one larger but more ambivalent, and the other smaller and more committed
to
> their candidate, and the members of a faction voted almost exactly the
same
> way, without prior communication on how to vote), but, anyway, all the
> systems produced nearly the same result, except for borda, which produced
a
> wildly different result (out of six candidates, the candidate who won the
> borda count came third in the rating system, and did even worse in some of
> the others).
> 
> I thought it was quite interesting.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Forest Simmons [mailto:fsimmons at pcc.edu]
> Sent: Thursday, 1 February 2001 14:58
> To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
> Subject: Re:Borda Count
> 
> Suppose you have 16 candidates to rank.  You know how each of them stands
> on the four issues that you consider vital.  No two have the same profile
> on these issues, so if we represent "agrees with you" and "disagrees with
> you" by the letters a and d respectively, the 16 candidates can be
> identified by their profiles:  aaaa, aaad, aada, aadd, adaa, adad, adda,
> addd, daaa, daad, dada, dadd, ddaa, ddad, ddda, dddd
> 
> In an informal non-binding poll you are asked to rate them on a scale of
> zero to 100%, so naturally you rate them in proportion to the number of
> issues on which they agree with you (assuming all of the issues are
> equally important to you).
> 
> aaaa gets 100%
> addd, dadd, ddad, ddda get identical ratings of 75%
> aadd, adad, adda, daad, dada, ddaa get identical ratings of 50%
> daaa, adaa, aada, aaad  get identiacl ratings of 25%
> dddd gets 0% .
> 
> Next, in another informal non-binding poll you are asked to rank the
> candidates.
> 
> Since you cannot distinguish all of them on the issues, you use looks and
> personality to break up the groups with identical ratings:
> 
> aaaa > aaad > aada > ... > dddd
> 
> The second pollster immediately converts your rankings to a rating via the
> Borda Count with  rates between 0/15 and 15/15.
> 
> Which would you consider to be a more accurate representation of your
> estimation of the candidates' abilities to represent your viewpoint in
> the legislature? 
> 
> Forest
> 
>