[EM] 05/13/02 - The Education of Poor Richard:
Craig Carey
research at ijs.co.nz
Tue May 14 07:34:32 PDT 2002
At 02\05\13 20:18 -0700 Monday, Michael Rouse wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Donald Davison" <donald at mich.com>
>To: "[EM]" <election-methods-list at eskimo.com>
>Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 5:35 AM
>Subject: [EM] 05/13/02 - The Education of Poor Richard:
>
>> Whenever anyone uses the code words `Condorcet Winner' they are attempting
>> to establish Condorcet to this high position as the standard of all
>> single-seat election methods including Condorcet itself. I do not accept
That argument becomes less true as the number of candidates rises since the
problem of the Condorcet winner not existing becomes predominant.
If it is not defined for 2 winners then it is almost certainly a worthless
notion. After decades of considering, nothing seems to have resulted.
>> Condorcet as the standard, but of more importance I say it is dishonest to
>> regard any method to be a standard of all methods including itself. This
>> dishonesty will create junk mathematics and I said as much in my reply to
>> Alex's use of the code words.
>
>I have to agree with Forest Simmons -- saying that the "Condorcet Winner"
>is one criterion in evaluating elections is not the same as saying it is the
>*only* criterion.
(Requiring that a 2nd method have the same set of winners can get close to
being a requirement that the 2nd method be the same method.
Is there something important that Forest Simmons wrote?.
> There are other important criteria that should be
>considered: the Majority Criterion, the Monotonicity Criterion, and the
>Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Criterion, to name a few.
>
There are 3 there and 2 are not important I presume. The Majority Criteria
is too weak but that you can tell us how a fix of that problem could
proceed. The "Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives" test is not
important at all, unless you have an uncommon definition. A method never
rise to being important if its appears for decades at the Social something
theory journal. It can't be important: it rejected with an example having
few papers.
Mike Ossipoff recently told about the criticism of IRV and he used his
"favorite" definition, yet earlier this year he told this mailing list
that a "favorite" was what I wanted it to be. So the criticism of IRV
was very weak indeed. If he had of not sought to make a public pretending
to answer my request for the definition that then still the attack of
IRV would have perfectly failed since it is a wrong rule.
Mr Rouse might not have been reading my messages closely enough when I
was last subscribed.
-------------------------------------
At 02\04\10 17:50 +1200 Wednesday, Craig Carey wrote:
...
> >At 2000\12\25 06:37 +1300 Monday, Craig Carey wrote to
> >instantrunoff-freewheeling:
> >...
> >>Here is (6.2): ((AB)->(B), Cw->Bw: Allowed but vote wastage):
> >>
> (AB)<-->(B)
> >> (6.2): -------------
> >> AB 2 1
> >> B 0 1
> >> BC 1 1
> >> CB 2 2
> >> -------------
> >> AV: C B : (AB {C+)-(B+ )
> >> IFPP: C B : (AB {C+)-(B+ )
> pref-Approval: B B
> FPTP: A|C B|C
> >>
> >> Total = 5. Quota = 1.6666..
> >>
> >...
> >
> >
>*>IFPP is partly derived here: http://www.ijs.co.nz/quota-13.htm ]
...
-------------------------------------
I can't recall the exact definition of IIA, but I recall that that
example eliminated the method (once the additional mathematics is
done: i.e. the derivation of the ideal 3 candidate preferential voting
method).
>Nor is it saying that the Condorcet method should be the single unassailable
>"gold standard" by which all other methods are measured, only that it has a
>"common sense" property (that if one candidate can beat any other in a
>one-on-one race, then that candidate should be the winner) that is useful in
>comparing other voting methods. You can, if you prefer, replace each
>occurrence of "Condorcet Winner" with "the winner of all head-to-head
>matchups" or "pairwise winner."
>
Mr Davison said that pairwise comparing is an idea to which no importance
is allocated. There are all sorts of criticisms that can be made using
principles about principles.
>In its favor, Instant Runoff Voting does pass the Majority Criterion. So
>does Condorcet. One strike against Condorcet voting is that it fails the
>Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Criterion -- although only when
It is not a strike against Condorcet. It sounds to me like you are
presuming correct, something that is not.
>there is a circular tie, where the "irrelevant alternative" is part of the
>cycle. Unfortunately, IRV violates IIAC as well, *and* it violates
>monotonicity. If the possibility that your second-place vote could help
>defeat your primary candidate is a problem, how much worse is the
>possibility that greater preference for a candidate can defeat him? (Others
Mr Rouse might mean the "second preference" rather than "second vote".
Anyway the meaning of the words, "primary candidate", seem to be too
unclear.
What exactly is unfortunate about the Alternative Vote violating the
1950s axiom of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives ?. A first thing
to do on the 1st night of hearing of something as implausible as IIA,
might be to see if it takes less than the 17 papers that prove the
Alternative Vote non-monotonic. Where do the transient and false
comments that IIA has some merit, come from ?. Please answer my question.
It could be speculated that false information is taught at American
universities.
You don't seem to have recognised that the 5 paper example I gave is an
example that permits the claim that there is a problem, to be found to
be incorrect.
>have posted examples of this, and they are "contrived" only in the sense
>that all hypothetical examples are contrived.)
>
>For me, the biggest argument against IRV is the "Exclusion of the Compromise
>Candidate." Given uniform distribution, if less than two-thirds of the
>electorate lies between two candidates of equal strength and opposite
There may not even be a distribution whatsoever. If there is a distribution
then maybe there are no ballot papers and so way to use the method and
get the winners. I read ahead to next message that says it corrects a
mistake.
In the 3 candidate Alternative Vote, if equal quantities of the papers
(A), (B), (C), are added, and if the quantity added tends towards positive
infinity, then the percentage difference between the 1st and last candidates
(by a counting that considers only the 1st preferences), narrows towards 0%
even though the central candidate of the 3, can win.
As soon as the uniform distribution is said to be used, then the results
can be rejected. Anyway, why is any respect being held out for a test that
is not in the list of what was said to be important at the top of the
message I reply to. It sounds like a completely new test rather than a
corollarly or something.
>political viewpoint, it is impossible for a third "central" candidate to
>win.
I guess that if we get more of the details of that impossibility
conclusion, it might turn up to be something that could be described this
way:
>> This dishonesty will create junk mathematics and I said as much in my
>> reply to Alex's use of the code words.
I note about Richard: mathematics can be, in itself (inherently) utterly
unimportant and in my glimpses at what Richard has written, I have not
seen any mathematics of interest, with it being on how to manipulate
one less well known checkbox method.
How is it that Mr Rouse did not mention truncation resistance?.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
At 02\04\10 21:09 +0000 Wednesday, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
>
>Craig Carey asked:
>
>I ask Mike Ossipoff to define these terms:
>
>* "equilibria"
>* "favorite-burial"
...
>Your favorite is the candidate whom you prefer to all the others,
>if there's one candidate whom you prefer to all the others.
>
>Favorite burial means voting someone else over your favorite.
>
>On EM I've defined what I mean by voting one candidate over another.
>The definition corresponds with what one would expect the term to
>mean.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks Mike: he gave the full rights to the definition of the
Ossipoff "favorite" to me. You can all see that. Mike has in the
past claimed that maths is starting to need to be cautioned about
and he even once referred me to a dictionary.
I suggest that members here are stupid people if they can't grok
the abc's of Mike "favorite" theory and can't know precisely how to
test partly parameterised 4 candidate Borda methods using that
latest burying test that Mr Ossipoff always puts the word "favorite"
into.
---------------------------
http://www.mail-archive.com/election-methods-list@eskimo.com/msg08000.html
From: Forest Simmons
Subject: Re: [EM] 05/13/02 - The Education of Poor Richard:
Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 15:04:20 -0700
>A method satisfies the Condorcet Criterion iff it always chooses the
>candidate preferred by a majority over any other candidate when there is
>such a candidate.
...
Tell us about the summing steps Mr Simmons: aren't there 4 categories
into which papers may be allocated according to whether they do, or
do not, name 2 given and different candidates ?. What are the principles
that resulted in the use of 4 categories, there, ?.
There is a lot hidden beyond the word "a majority". There is 4
categories, summing, weights used in summing, graph theory ideas,
arbitrary decisions to have let none of the essential statements
resolving 2 and 3 winner issues, exist. Surely it is not something so
arbitrary as difficulty in resolving problems with "beats all" graph
theory ideas ?. What is the (explicable to the public) reasoning for
having a test that does not exist when there is more than one winner?.
One of the problems here is that persons that really like Condorcet
are likely to be persons that will not cough up much of a defence for
that method, as far as I can tell.
>IRVists claim that IRV chooses "the" majority winner. But the IRV winner
>has to win only one majority preference to claim that title. To earn the
>title "Condorcet Winner" a candidate has to beat all comers head-to-head
>including the IRV winner.
>Loring Ensemble Rules recognize the superiority of the CW over the IRV
Loring might have been pursuing an uninteresting line of thinking.
Craig Carey
Politicians and Polytopes: preferential voting:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/politicians-and-polytopes
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