[EM] Graphics of simulations

[Richard, the VoteFair guy]

On 2/26/2023 9:47 PM, Forest Simmons wrote:
 > Here's my question: do simulations carry any weight
 > with the public? Or do they just care about choice
 > of buzz words and phrases like democracy; majority
 > rule, etc?

I have not seen hardly anyone in the "public" realm who initially seems 
to care about simulations.

Mostly they care about "who will win?" "which party does it favor?" 
"does it empower minorities?" and most of all: "Can I understand it? And 
does it make sense?"

For the latter, the FairVote organization has popularized the notion of 
eliminating one candidate at a time.  It's easier to comprehend. 
Especially compared to something like the Smith set.  Even the Condorcet 
winner concept is difficult for many, many voters to understand.

Aside: I've had success educating "the public" about the idea that a 
"pairwise losing candidate" -- which is a simpler variation of 
"Condorcet loser" -- deserves to be eliminated.  A soccer analogy helps: 
if a soccer team loses against every other team then it shouldn't be 
possible for that team to win.  (This is one of the two refinements over 
IRV that the RCIPE method, mentioned below, offers.  The other 
refinement is to count ballots that the FairVote folks wants to discard 
as an "overvote.")

Yet simulations can be useful _IF_ the results are presented as a 
_GRAPHIC_ that compares "your" methods with familiar methods.

I created a graphic (at the following link) that shows failure rates for 
RCIPE (ranked choice including pairwise elimination) and IPE (instant 
pairwise elimination) plotted along with IRV, plurality, Borda, and 
Kemeny.  That graphic has been helpful to some people who already 
understand IRV and have heard about Condorcet methods.

   http://votefair.org/clone_iia_success_rates.png

In this sense such a graphic is like a Yee diagram.  Most people 
intuitively recognize that the Yee diagram for IRV reveals that method 
has serious flaws.  (However, trying to explain Yee diagrams is not 
fruitful.)

The fans of STAR voting have gotten lots of mileage from their graphs of 
VSE (voter satisfaction efficiency).  Alas most people don't realize 
that the "efficiency" is meaningful among a group of friends or 
cooperative people, but is not meaningful in governmental elections 
where strength of opinion violates the principle of "one person one vote."

In summary, graphics that show many thousands of simulations for 
multiple methods are useful among informed voters.

Such graphics are also useful for us, the experts.  It reveals the 
extent to which a method is better than other methods.

In other words, just looking at specific cases to identify failure 
possibilities is of limited use.  In contrast, quantitative graphics 
that allow failure rates to be compared with familiar methods are quite 
useful.

Not as "proofs" but as supporting evidence for claims about being "better."

And such graphics answer the question "Is this 'better' method worth the 
extra effort it takes to understand it and calculate it?"  If there is 
only a small gain, most people will say "no it's not worth the extra 
complication."

Forest, I've enjoyed your speculations about better methods.  It would 
be interesting to see graphics that show specific failure rates -- such 
as IIA, clone independence, burial resistance, chicken resistance, etc. 
Such graphic comparisons will reveal whether your improvements are big 
improvements or tiny improvements, and which methods excel at which 
characteristics.

Then it will become easier to find a balance between mathematically 
ideal and "good enough" for use in real elections.

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy