[EM] re: CR/Approval and cutoffs

[Kevin Venzke]

Forest,

 --- Forest Simmons <fsimmons at pcc.edu> a écrit : 
> 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. 

I'm not so sure about this.  Suppose we're talking about strategy for a method
called "Disapproval."  Wouldn't the proper strategy be "Disapprove every candidate
worse than your expectation for the election"?  It seems to me that optimal strategy
tells us nothing about what to do with candidates on the average, and I think it's
because there's no good or bad advice either way.

Supposing that one only approves above expectation, it should be just as likely
that we cause an expectation-level candidate to lose to someone worse, as to keep a 
preferable candidate from winning were we to approve the expectation-level candidate.

> 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?

Good points.  But I would point out that if your expectation really were 100% or
0%, it wouldn't make a fig of difference whether you approved or disapproved any
of the viable candidates.

> (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.

I like this.

> (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.

I like this less, because it could be an important decision, which candidates
are placed above or below the midrange rating.

> (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.

I could live with this, but I think it's more complicated than would be
needed.

The bottom line, for me, is that it would not be good to have every voter
disapprove the candidates at their expectation level.

Kevin Venzke
stepjak at yahoo.fr


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