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.<div>
<br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Also, using single letters makes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sample_ballot_for_Majority_Judgment_(SF).png">ballot design significantly easier</a>. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Jameson</div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_quote">2012/12/6 Andy Jennings <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:elections@jenningsstory.com" target="_blank">elections@jenningsstory.com</a>></span><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I'm in the U.S. Even here, where the standard educational scale is alphabetical, I much prefer actual adjectives for the grades:<div>
<br></div><div>Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor, Reject</div><div><br></div><div>
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.</div>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<div><br></div><div>~ Andy</div></font></span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 2:54 PM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Walabio@macosx.com" target="_blank">Walabio@macosx.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> ¡Hello!<br>
<br>
¿How fare you?<br>
<br>
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?:<br>
<br>
In the United States of America, we grade students using letters:<br>
<br>
A+<br>
A<br>
A-<br>
B+<br>
B<br>
B-<br>
C+<br>
C<br>
C-<br>
D+<br>
D<br>
D-<br>
F+<br>
F<br>
F-<br>
<br>
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:<br>
<br>
People outside the United States of America:<br>
<br>
¿Do you Understand this Scale?<br>
<br>
For everyone:<br>
<br>
¿Is this scale acceptable to you?<br>
<br>
Followup question:<br>
<br>
If this scale is not acceptable to you, ¿why is it not acceptable to you?<br>
<br>
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:<br>
<br>
¿Why not just use the ranges 0 to 9 or negative -9 to positive +9 instead?<br>
<br>
¡Peace!<br>
<br>
--<br>
<br>
“⸘Ŭalabio‽” <Walabio@MacOSX.Com><br>
<br>
Skype:<br>
Walabio<br>
<br>
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<a href="http://circleaks.org/" target="_blank">http://circleaks.org/</a><br>
<br>
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——<br>
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br></div>