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

[Jameson Quinn]

I tend to favor letter grades for MJ. Since the MJ (or CMJ) tiebreaker
itself assigns plusses and minuses, you can simply use the letters
A,B,C,D,F. That's only 5 categories; if you wanted 6, you could add an
explicit "A+" option, because without that the tiebreaker could never
assign a + to the highest grade.

I understand Andy's "grade inflation" criticism of using the school grading
system. However, I don't think it's a problem, for a couple of reasons. For
one, if you're starting from a two-party system, people will have enough
time to get used to a common social understanding of what the grades mean
for voting, before there are enough parties for mistakes to make much of a
difference. For another, a moderate amount of grade inflation is actually a
good thing. I personally have never seen a president whom I'd rate above a
D+ or C- on an absolute scale (or at best "poor" in verbal terms), and
never seen even a third-party candidate whom I'd give more than a B-
("fair"), but I still think it would be in my interest to give out A's and
B's. And as a society, it's even more in our interest that people don't
fall too easily into giving exsessive F's in a chicken dilemma situation.

Also, using single letters makes ballot design significantly
easier<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sample_ballot_for_Majority_Judgment_(SF).png>
.

So I support letter grades, but I certainly don't want to fight about it.
Whatever option has more support, I'm with that one.

Jameson

2012/12/6 Andy Jennings <elections at jenningsstory.com>

> I'm in the U.S.  Even here, where the standard educational scale is
> alphabetical, I much prefer actual adjectives for the grades:
>
> Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor, Reject
>
> MJ works best when the voters, as much as possible, have a shared
> understanding of the actual meaning of the grades.  With grading curves and
> grade inflation, I feel that the A-F scale is not good enough as a "common
> language" across our culture anymore.
>
> ~ Andy
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 2:54 PM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ <Walabio at macosx.com> 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?
>>
>>         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?
>>
>>         ¡Peace!
>>
>> --
>>
>>         “⸘Ŭalabio‽” <Walabio at MacOSX.Com>
>>
>> Skype:
>>         Walabio
>>
>> An IntactWiki:
>>         http://circleaks.org/
>>
>>         “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled
>> to your own facts.”
>>         ——
>>         Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20121207/004a4078/attachment-0004.htm>