[EM] CW & SU (response to Ossipoff false claims)

Warren Smith wds at math.temple.edu
Fri Feb 23 11:44:39 PST 2007


I suggest to  Mike Ossipoff that after I point out to him that
I refuted his false claims in a web page
    http://rangevoting.org/BlackSingle.html#condmyth
he at least consult that web page BEFORE making claims that
have already been disproved there.

I already gave examples in 1D where the Condorcet Winner - who in that
example is the median voter - is not best in terms of social utility.

I repeat.  Essentially every claim Ossipoff ever made about
Condorcet winners vis a vis social utility and median voters, is false.
Now while that was bad, it is worse to continue to make
already-refuted claims.

Just to make it ultra-easy for Ossipoff, I have now
made a concise "executive summary" webpage since I realize actually reading 2 full pages is
beyond him:
   http://rangevoting.org/BlackSExec.html

All those things are proved on the web page I cited that Ossipoff keeps not reading.

And no *I* did NOT say academic authors had their "heads up their ass."  Ossipoff did.
I merely pointed out that they usually publish theorems that are correct,
unlike Ossipoff.  Try not to ascribe your opinions to me.

I see he now has retreated to the vague stance that
"At least one can say  that, in spatial voting,
the wv Condorcet methods will tend to do well by
SU, even if one can't make stronger guarantees."

"Tend to do well"?  Pretty pathetic, isn't it.     Guess we could
say that about every voting method, couldn't we.  But anyhow, rather than relying on
vague assurances, we can actually MEASURE how well they do.  That is what my
simulator program IEVS does.  Although rank-equalities in votes have
not yet been implemented in IEVS, that makes no difference if we are only
discussing honest voters.  IEVS usually finds that Condorcet methods are midpack
in terms of SU (social utility).

The high-SU methods include range voting, Brian Olson's IRNR system, and range+top2runoff,
and Benham's MCA system (a 3-slot approval-like method).

Approval Voting using "zero info strategy" is found in net in current
IEVS scenarios to have better SU than
every honest-voter-Condorcet method tried (and IEVS has about 20 of them).

Warren D. Smith
http://rangevoting.org




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