<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META NAME="Generator" CONTENT="MS Exchange Server version 6.5.7226.0">
<TITLE>Re: [EM] 0-info approval voting, repeated polling, and adjusting priors</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV id=idOWAReplyText22544 dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>Jobst gave examples in which optimal approval strategy
for someone with preferences A>B>C>D would be to approve only A
and C. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>Mike Ossipoff and Richard Moore first made me aware of
these counterintuitive possibilities. But I still believe that one would
have to have impossibly precise and reliable probability and utility
estimates before one would gain a significant advantage by skipping over
B. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>Usually the probabilities and the utilities are crude
subjective estimates. However, in the case of repeated balloting, the
probabilities get refined (if we can figure out how to do it!), and for the
sake of idealization we can assume that the utilities are precise, too.
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>If we can find a repeated balloting method that take
these refinements into account, then great, but if it is only tractable to
forget the tie probabilites and use the simpler "cutoff" style strategies, then
no big loss.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2>Forest</FONT></DIV></DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>