[EM] Whoops! Condorcet vis-a-vis L1 distance situation = even worse than I thought

Jobst Heitzig heitzig-j at web.de
Mon Feb 19 14:07:19 PST 2007


Dear Warren,

you wrote:
> o\xBxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> oo\xxx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ooo\xx|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> oooo\x|xxxxxxxxAxxxxxxx
> ooooo\|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> oooooo|xxXxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> oooooo|\xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> oooooo|o\xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> ------O----------------
> oooooo|ooo\xxxxxxxxxxxx
> oooooo|oooo\xxxxxxxxxxx
> oooooo|ooooo\xxxxxxxxxx
> ooCooo|oooooo\xxxDxxxxx
> oooooo|ooooooo\xxxxxxxx
> oooooo|oooooooo\xxxxxxx
> oooooo|ooooooooo\xxxxxx
> oooooo|oooooooooo\xxxxx
>
> In this picture, there are two candidates "O" and "X."
> O is located at the origin which is
> the median x-coordinate and median Y-coordinate of all voters.
> There are 10 voters in the quadrant labeled "A", all in the "x"
> region. There is 1 voter located at B, and one located at D.
> Finally, there are 10 voters in the quadrant labeled "C".

Hmm. I observe two things which might be helpful: 1. X is as well a 
median of those voters, in the sense that to its left,right,top and 
bottom half of the voters are. 2. Perhaps what Mike meant by "median" 
was the spacial median in the sense of minimizing the sum of distances 
to all voters, in whatever metric? Then it seems that X is nearer to 
that median than O, isn't it?

Jobst



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