[EM] Top Three Condorcet

[Forest Simmons]

It's somewhat traditional for the inventor to name the invention.  But I'm
open to suggestion.

There's a great Dr. Suess story in which Mrs. McCave had twenty-three sons
and named them all "Dave."  It lists all of the names that she could have
used, ending, "... and one of them BuckBuckMcFate, but she didn't do it,
and now it's too late."

On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Dave Ketchum wrote:

> HELP:  Need some input for the Jargon Dictionary - Who is right, Forest or
> myself?

What does this have to do with any Jargon Dictionary?  You can classify an
object by genus and phylum, and even give it a Latin name reflecting that
classification if you want, but that won't change its given name.

> Forest is proposing a "class of methods" (see below) in which the ballots
> include both rankings, as we expect for Condorcet, AND ratings or grades,
> as are used in some other methods.
>

Each such method has a final Condorcet step whose only input is the voter
rankings of the candidates.

>   I do not object to his offering a class of methods - that is expected in
> EM and, occasionally, something good comes of it, BUT:
>       Forest uses "Condorcet" in the group name.

If I were picky, I could object to your use of "group" for "class" but I
know what you mean.

>       I claim that word should be reserved for methods using the ranked
> ballots I (and others) expect for Condorcet methods.
>

It seems to me that if an important ingredient of object X is an idea of
Condorcet (an idea universally associated with his name), then an
ingredient of the name of object X should be "Condorcet" both to honor his
memory and to give credit where credit is due.

It would be rather arrogant of me to call them "Top Three Simmons"
methods, when Condorcet deserves most of the credit.

I don't see any TM (trade mark) attached to the name Condorcet, so until
Condorcet himself objects, or until someone offers a name that I like
better, or until some name is adopted by universal acclamation, I'll
probably stick with "Top three Condorcet."

Of course, there's always BuckBuckMcFate :-)

Forest

> Dave Ketchum
>
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:18:01 -0700 (PDT) Forest Simmons wrote:
>
>  > On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Dave Ketchum wrote:
>  >
>  > [...]
>  >
>  >
>  >>All of this because I objected to Forest using "Condorcet" in a
>  >>method name when the method involved ratings (he uses the word
>  >>"grade" which seems to me to be a synonym for rating).
>  >>
>  >
>  > Well, let that be a lesson to you :|]
>  >
>  > To clear up the misunderstanding, "Top Three Condorcet" is not a method
>  > name, but is the name of a class of methods that have in common one thing:
>  > they use Condorcet's method to choose the winner from among three
>  > finalists.  At that stage (if not before) only the relative rankings (with
>  > equality allowed) of the three finalists is used as input to Condorcet.
>  >
>  >>From these rankings the pairwise matrix is determined.  It makes no
>  > difference if this matrix is processed according to the rules of MAM,
>  > CSSD, or MinMax; the outcome will be the same: if there is a cycle, then
>  > it will be broken at the weakest link.  Otherwise the finalist that beats
>  > both of the others wins.
>  >
>  > Who has the best idea on how to narrow down to three finalists?
>  >
>  > Here are some that have already been proposed:
>  >
>  > 1.  Take the top three approval scorers.
>  >
>  > 2.  Take the IRV winner along with the last two that IRV would have
>  > eliminated.
>  >
>  > 3.  Take the Buckley winner, the Nanson winner, and the Coombs winner.
>  >
>  > 4.  Take the MinMax winner along with the two MinMax runnerups.
>  >
>  > 5.  List the candidates in order of approval. Then (from strongest
>  > discrepancy to weakest discrepancy) transpose adjacent candidates in the
>  > list until there is no order discrepancy among adjacent pairs. Take the
>  > top three candidates from this list.
>  >
>  >
>  > This last suggestion has the advantage of always choosing from the Smith
>  > Set, without ever having to explicitly enumerate that set.  Indeed, after
>  > the adjacent discrepancies have been removed, the Smith Set will
>  > automatically head the list, as surely as the cream rises to the top in
>  > Brown Cow yogurt.
>  >
>  > The discrepancy removal process is just the familiar process of
>  > sorting by height a motley line of recruits before undertaking military
>  > drill:
>  >
>  > WHILE any recruit is taller than the one to his/her immediate right,
>  >
>  > DO switch the adjacent recruits with the greatest such height discrepancy.
>  >
>  > END
>  >
>  > This version of Top Three Condorcet is summable, since it only requires
>  > the pairwise matrix and the approval scores (which for convenience can be
>  > incorporated as diagonal entries in the pairwise matrix).
>  >
>  > [For ranking purists (who don't like approval cutoffs) substitute Borda
>  > Scores for Approval Scores in Method 5.]
>  >
>  > Any other ideas for Top Three Condorcet?
> --
>    davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
>    Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
>              Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
>                    If you want peace, work for justice.
>
>
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