[EM] Majority-Judgement using adjectives versus alphabetical scales versus numerical ranges.

[Juho Laatu]

On 6.12.2012, at 23.54, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote:

> 	¡Hello!
> 
> 	¿How fare you?
> 
> 	Yesterday, I noted that Majority-Judgements does not work if we have too many adjectives because we have only so many adjectives and voters might confuse adjectives too close in meaning..  ¿Would an alphabetical scale be acceptable?:
> 
> 	In the United States of America, we grade students using letters:
> 
> 	A+
> 	A
> 	A-
> 	B+
> 	B
> 	B-
> 	C+
> 	C
> 	C-
> 	D+
> 	D
> 	D-
> 	F+
> 	F
> 	F-
> 
> 	I have 2 questions grading candidates on this scale.  1 question is for people not in the United States of America.  The other question is for everyone:
> 
> 	People outside the United States of America:
> 
> 	¿Do you Understand this Scale?

Very understandable. If some values should be considered unacceptable, then that category should be pointed out.

> 
> 	For everyone:
> 
> 	¿Is this scale acceptable to you?
> 
> 	Followup question:
> 
> 	If this scale is not acceptable to you, ¿why is it not acceptable to you?
> 
> 	With 15 grades, this scale is not very different from the numerical ranges of 0 to 9 or negative -9 to positive +9.  This raises the question:
> 
> 	¿Why not just use the ranges 0 to 9 or negative -9 to positive +9 instead?

Each country could use those values (letters or numbers) that people are most familiar with. If you want to have universal coverage, then numbers are good since they heve the same meaning and people are familiar with them everyehere.

It depends on the type of election if "-n to +n" is better than "0 to n" or "1 to n". If there is an "approval cutoff" or "unacceptable values", then the scale can be from "a to b to c" (b can be 0 or a positive number). Since most number systems are based on 10, ranges that are in one way or another based on that number are good.

I guess low values are usually worse than high values, but one could also use ranking style values where "1" is the best value.

Juho


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