[EM] Comparing Partial Rankings

[Stephen Turner]

There is an interesting 2006 paper by
Fagin, Kumar et al, called
"Comparing Partial Rankings".

They work with metrics on partial rankings,
generalising well-known metrics like
the Spearman footrule and the
Kendall tau distance (which are
defined on permutations, that is
rankings without ties).

In fact the context of their work
seems to be online commerce and
web development . The
question that arises is whether
anybody has built on this work
in the area of voting.  Anyone
have any pointers?

Thanks, Stephen Turner
---------------------------
The article can be downloaded here:
www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/fagin/sidma06.pdf

ABSTRACT
We provide a comprehensive picture of how to compare
partial rankings, that is, rankings that allow ties.
We propose several metrics to compare partial rankings
and prove that they are within constant multiples of
each other.

Published as: SIAM J. DISCRETE MATH.
Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 628–648 (in 2006)