[EM] Educative Alternative Voting board...

[Olli Salmi]

At 21:14 +0800 11.2.2004, Anguo wrote:
>  > Second, I find it a bit
>>  confusing that you refer to the simple
>>  whoever-gets-the-most-votes-wins method as "majority." I
>>  am more accustomed to calling it "plurality." Another
>>  name for it is "first past the post." I think the term
>>  "majority" is misleading, because it is quite possible
>>  for a candidate to win without a majority of the vote.
>>  Indeed, this is the root of all the problems in the
>>  plurality method. I don't think that there is a single
>>  method that should be called majority. Rather, majority
>>  rule is an ideal goal for single-winner methods, which
>>  turns out to be impossible to achieve in some situations
>>  because of the Condorcet paradox.
>
>Thank you for pointing my error out to me. As I said, I am
>no expert: I see now that I confused 'majority' with
>'plurality'. I have already made the appropriate changes in
>my local master copy of the web site and those changes will
>show next time I upload the site.

According to dictionaries, plurality is mainly an American word in 
this meaning. Other countries and languages tend to call it relative 
majority. What Americans call majority is absolute majority when you 
need to be precise.

Olli Salmi