[EM] Responses to some of Forest's ideas

[Forest Simmons]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2001, Richard Moore wrote:

> Forest Simmons wrote:
> 
> > The results of these simulations would depend on what strategy you used
> > for zero info Approval. Did you use above mean, not below median, above
> > midrange, above largest gap, some combination of these, or Richard's
> > optimal method?
> 
> 
> Forest,
> 
> Which method? The only optimal zero-info method (from a 
> utility-expectation viewpoint) that I know is the above-mean 
> strategy, valid for large populations. The only other 
> Approval strategy I remember proposing, besides the "neural 
> network" strategy of voting whichever way "feels" best, was 
> an approximation for small populations. I never really 
> determined how good that approximation is, so I don't 
> consider it optimal. Is that the method you mean?

I vaguely remember that there was a sudden realization that the above mean
criterion was necessary but not sufficient for optimizing expected utility
in a zero-info environment.

I also remembered that you made excellent progress on the small population
case, and (prematurely?) gave you credit for an asymptotic solution in the
large population case :-) 

Forest