[EM] Steph: You still haven't heard my question.

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

You wrote:

Stephanie and Mike,

I have enjoyed your debate and wonder if you thought of looking at defining
a median in terms of the distribution of individual preference orderings
represented by a beta distribution.  Ths approach is rigorous and flexible.
It might also accomodate a definition of threshholds for allocaating
approval votes.

I reply:

It seems to me that Alex discussed a distribution preference orderings
or rankings. If it would yield a simpler approach to determining
the tie-probabilities for Approval strategy then it's worth looking
into.

But one thing that we like about Approval is that it will quickly
start electing at the voter median, and then keep doing so, by
the ordinary meaning of median.

And if looking at a distribution of sincere rankings, and its
median could lead to new criteria or methods, that would be interesting
too, though they'd be methods and criteria that couldn't be publicly
proposed, since you can't propose something publicly if it can't
be explained to everyone.

Forrest has been investigating new methods
based on mathematics. I don't know if he's already considered
distributions of sincere preference orderings.

Mike



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