[EM] Intro to list (etc)

[Rob Brown]

At 02:53 PM 10/26/2003, you wrote:
>Errr, "Condorcet" doesn't produce a "ranking." It selects one winner. You
>have to use something to pick a winner when there is no Condorcet Winner (I
>think you said Ranked Pairs), so to make a graph such as you suggest you
>could list #1 = Ranked Pairs Winner{over all candidates}, #2 = Ranked Pairs
>Winner{over all candidates except #1}, etc. In that case there's no points
>to graph on a bar, though.

Yes, I am sorry if I was sloppy in my wording.  I meant exactly as you 
describe.  Use the condorcet winner if there is one, use ranked pairs to 
break ties, and iteratively use the same logic to find the second, third, 
forth places etc.  For lack of a better term, i'll call this method of 
ranking the candidates "iterative condorcet / ranked pairs", or ICRP.

> >Yeah, I won't, although I will probably link to an in-depth article
> >explaining it to those who really care (such as those who will want to
> >question its validity...there are sure to be ones to do that!! ).  But for
> >most people, they won't know or care what it is called or care about the
> >details of how it works.
>
>This is why I suggest you use an arbitrary formula to plot the "strength of
>support" in graphical form. As long as you explain what the formula is,
>you're covered.

Right. As long as it isn't *too* arbitrary.....I mean, it needs to make 
sense and be meaningful, as subjective as those terms are.

I understand your point that a 2d matrix cannot produce 1d scores, 
directly.  My goal is to find some way of distilling the values in the 
table into scores, in a way that is 1) consistant with the ICRP order, and 
2) meaningfully answers peoples questions of "by how much did they 
win?"  There is no question that some of the values in the matrix would 
either need to be combined with others, or thrown away, since the matrix 
has more values than I wish to display.

I'm going to do some experiementing to see what I can come up with, but I'd 
be certainly be interested if you care to share your ideas on a reasonable 
formula.

-rob