[EM] another CR/Approval method

[Forest Simmons]

On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, [iso-8859-1] Kevin Venzke wrote:

>
> Also, it would be sensible for the (artificial) approval ballots to give a half
> vote to candidates who lie precisely on the average, since there's no justification
> either way to approve or disapprove such candidates.


If the average were actually the true expectation of the outcome (not
counting your ballot) then you should vote strictly above average. But
here we are neither dealing with true odds, nor making a decision for only
one ballot.

Suppose that the average were zero, the lowest slot. Would you want to
give partial points to the candidates in that slot?

Suppose that the average was the CR top slot value, would you then only
give partial credit to your favorite?

Because of these considerations I would like to suggest three
possibilities that give more reasonable answers to these questions:

(1) If the average comes out in some intermediate slot, give the
candidates in that slot half credit, but give full or no credit at the
extremes, depending on which extreme.

OR ELSE

(2) If the average comes out above the fifty percent CR level, then give
full credit for average CR.  If the average comes out below the fifty
percent CR level, then give no credit for the average CR.  If the average
CR of the viable candidates is exactly fifty percent of the CR, then give
the average candidates fifty percent credit.

OR ELSE

(3) If the average CR of the viable candidates is r percent of the total
max CR value, then any candidate rated at that level should receive r
percent partial credit.

All of these methods give fifty percent partial credit if the average is
at the middle, as well as full and zero partial credit at the two
extremes.

Forest