What Russ refers to as Weber�s Approval formula, or the Approval formula, actuallly describes the Better-Than-Expectation strategy that Forest defined a long time ago on EM. It was demonstrated on EM that, as I�ve said, by some reasonable approximations, Better-Than-Expectation becomes the same as the strategy method that actually was described by Weber, the strategy of voting for candidates whose strategic value is positive, using Weber�s strategic value formula.
Weber�s strategic value formula is different from what is at Russ�s website.
Most agree that the use of Better-Than-Expectation won�t involve calculating your expectation based on all the candidates�win-probabilities and their utilities. Rather, the convenient way to use Better-Than-Expectation is to simply ask if a particular candidate is better than what you expect from the election. Is that candidate so good that you�d rather have him/her in office rather than holding the election? If so, then vote for him/her.
As I said, it was demonstrated on EM that, with a few reasonable approximations, and when your estimated expectation is the same as that calculated from the candidates� Pi and their utilities as perceived by you, Better-Than-Expectation results in the same Approval ballot as does Weber�s strategy of voting for the candidates with positive strategic value.
I wrote a demonstration of that, for 4 candidates, at Russ�s website.
Better than expectation is one of the Approval strategies that I listed in my recent posting about the choce between Approval strategies.
Mike Ossipoff
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