[EM] Summability criterion: do I have this right?

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 10/6/23 06:45, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've made a change to electowiki's "Summability criterion" article:
> https://electowiki.org/wiki/Summability_criterion 
> <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Summability_criterion>

Some further thoughts about that article: I have tried to make the 
summability criterion definition very general and information 
theoretical. For instance, the definition as listed in the article 
doesn't depend on just what the summary combination operator is, as long 
as it can't be used to cheat and turn non-summable methods summable.

Perhaps this is more confusing than enlightening - particularly the 
parts about growing as log(V) in the number of voters.

In practice, pretty much every summable method I can think of (even 
contingent vote, STAR, and majority judgment) use plain old addition to 
combine summaries. For instance, combining Condorcet matrices is just 
adding the cells in the two matrices together; combining Plurality 
counts is also just adding up the votes per candidate; and combining 
contingent vote summaries is just one Condorcet matrix and a Plurality 
count per.

So maybe it would be better to come up with a simple idea that gets at 
the gist of it, and then have a technical nitty-gritty section to patch 
up all the loopholes... perhaps with examples for each method what their 
summaries are (Condorcet matrices, positional counts, etc). But I'm not 
sure how to do that; my prior answer is probably still a bit too 
cumbersome to give an intuitive idea.

It's too bad we don't have any feedback from "mere readers" of 
Electowiki... it's hard to know what level of detail to write at.

-km