[EM] Presidential debate ordering

[Juho]

On May 22, 2007, at 16:41 , Howard Swerdfeger wrote:

>
>
> mrouse1 at mrouse.com wrote:
>> A few days ago, we had the Republican debates on TV, and I came to  
>> the
>> conclusion that having ten people on the stage at once was an  
>> unmanageable
>> mess. At thirty seconds per answer, candidates were limited to  
>> faux anger
>> and soundbites, while the cheers and applause gave it a gameshow  
>> feel.
>> (Well, okay, so it was better than the debate on MSNBC, where you had
>> questions like "What do you hate most about America?")
>>
>> What I'd like to see is one-on-one, round-robin debates. Now, we  
>> could
>> pair up the candidates randomly, but where is the fun in that? What I
>> thought might be interesting is to have each candidate pick the  
>> order he
>> wanted to debate every other candidate, and choose the order that  
>> best
>> matches the aggregate preference. Unfortunately, I am not certain the
>> fairest way to piece together incomplete debate orders (each  
>> candidate
>> would have nine debates, but the total field would have a total of 45
>> debates).
>>
>> Anyone know the best way to do something like this? It would be  
>> similar to
>> scheduling a baseball season or other sporting event, so it would  
>> seem to
>> have a use beyond just debates.
>>
>
> Interesting idea. 10 people on stage is to many. but 45 pair wise
> debates it a lot for the public to watch.
>
> Perhaps there is a good middle ground say, 4-5 people on stage at  
> once.
> and try to make sure that each candidate faces each candidate on  
> stage once.

There could be different criteria when organizing the debates:
1) Fix the size of the debate groups
2) Arrange each candidate the same number of pairwise debates with  
other candidates (typically one with each)
3) Give each candidate same number of minutes in TV

Criterion 3 is maybe a fair criterion for politics. In addition to  
this one could fix the size of the groups (allowing some to debate in  
smaller groups could be considered an advantage). These together mean  
that in most cases we would need to violate criterion 2. Some  
candidates might meet twice. Maybe that would be no major problem.  
They would have maybe little less to talk to each others at the  
second round and they could concentrate beating the others, which  
would not be quite fair. But they could also continue their previous  
fights and balance the situation this way :-). Would this method be a  
fair method?

Juho

>
>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Michael Rouse
>>
>>
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