On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, [iso-8859-1] Kevin Venzke wrote: > > Also, it would be sensible for the (artificial) approval ballots to give a half > vote to candidates who lie precisely on the average, since there's no justification > either way to approve or disapprove such candidates.
If the average were actually the true expectation of the outcome (not counting your ballot) then you should vote strictly above average. But here we are neither dealing with true odds, nor making a decision for only one ballot. Suppose that the average were zero, the lowest slot. Would you want to give partial points to the candidates in that slot? Suppose that the average was the CR top slot value, would you then only give partial credit to your favorite? Because of these considerations I would like to suggest three possibilities that give more reasonable answers to these questions: (1) If the average comes out in some intermediate slot, give the candidates in that slot half credit, but give full or no credit at the extremes, depending on which extreme. OR ELSE (2) If the average comes out above the fifty percent CR level, then give full credit for average CR. If the average comes out below the fifty percent CR level, then give no credit for the average CR. If the average CR of the viable candidates is exactly fifty percent of the CR, then give the average candidates fifty percent credit. OR ELSE (3) If the average CR of the viable candidates is r percent of the total max CR value, then any candidate rated at that level should receive r percent partial credit. All of these methods give fifty percent partial credit if the average is at the middle, as well as full and zero partial credit at the two extremes. Forest ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info