Hi Chris, My reply follows... James: >>The thing is, nobody has convinced me that there is any particular reason >>to care about mono-add-plump or mono-append. Maybe I should care about >>them, but I [don't] know why I should, at least not as yet. So, even if >they're >>bargain-basement cheap, I don't see why I should buy them. Chris: >I am flabbergasted at your claim that you need someone to *convince* >you to "care about" those criteria. Are there any criteria that that >you have come to care about without >anyone needing to convince you? (If so, which ones?) >(Just to be clear, in case anyone missed the definitions, Mono-add-Plump >means that if x wins and afterwards we add some ballots that >bullet-vote for x, then x must still win; >and Mono-append says that if x wins and afterwards we alter some >truncated ballots that didn't rank x to now rank x just below the >previously lowest-ranked candidate, then >x must still win.) >Either you are not serious and are to use a UK slang expression "taking >the piss", or you have a highly defective >intuition/sense-of-the-ridiculous.
Dang, that's harsh. I don't even know what we're arguing about. There are an infinite number of possible voting methods criteria, and for any possible voting method, it is quite easy to make up a criterion that the method fails. However, some criteria have much more practical significance than others. When I say that I don't know of any reason to care about a criterion, I mean that I don't know if it has much practical significance. Maybe it does, but if so I don't currently appreciate it. I think that it is possible to productively discuss (debate, convince) the relative practical significance of different criteria. But if you say that mono-add-plump and mono-append are met by pretty much every rank method, then that's fine with me; I don't see any reason to argue about them if they're not a factor in any comparison between interesting methods. To be perfectly honest, I have a hard time recalling the definitions for each of Woodall's monotonicity criteria without referring to his May 1996 paper. (There are 9 in total?) I suspect that many of them have rather limited practical significance, but again I'd rather not argue the point outside the context of particular method comparisons. > >>"If C is the CW and is ranked above X and Y on >>more than 1/3 of the ballots, the X>C faction cannot switch the winner >>from C to X by burying C under Y." >> >means exactly the same thing, but with mine noone needs to know what >"burying" means. Oh, okay. How about "...cannot switch the winner from C to X by insincerely voting C under Y." Sincerely, James ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info