[EM] Finding the probable best candidate?

[Adam Tarr]

I wrote and Markus responded,

> > Shwartz Sequential Dropping is better.  The only
> > differences as far as I can tell are that
> > 1) You only deal with the Smith Set
> > 2) You consider number of voters in favor of the defeat, not the margin
> > of the defeat.
>
>I don't understand this paragraph. Do you want to say that the difference
>between RP and SSD is that the latter one meets the Smith criterion

When I say, "you only deal with the Smith Set," I merely mean that SSD 
throws out all candidates outside the Smith set before it starts dropping 
defeats.  I am not directly attempting to imply anything about the Smith 
criterion.  It seems obvious, however, that this will force a member of the 
Smith set to win.  I'm not sure if this is true of Ranked Pairs.

>and
>measures the strength of a pairwise defeat by the number of voters in favor?

Yes, that's what I meant.

>Could you post those examples where RP and not SSD produces those 
>"seemingly undesirable results"?

I can't find those old messages in my archives, but here's a very simple 
example:

49: Bush
24: Gore
27: Nader,Gore

Bush beats Nader 49-27
Nader beats Gore 27-24
Gore beats Bush 51-49

With ranked pairs, the Gore-Bush defeat is overturned, and Bush wins, 
despite a true majority preferring Gore to Bush.  In SSD the Nader-Gore 
defeat gets overturned, and Gore wins, which seems more intuitive to me.

-Adam