On Sun, 2005-12-11 at 16:07 -0500, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 05:40 AM 12/11/2005, rob brown wrote: > >On 12/10/05, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax > ><<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Voting anything other than 1 or 10 (or whatever the range is) is > > >downweighting. > > > > "Give the candidates the scores you want them to receive" is > > simply bad strategy when you are using averages. > > Only if you have a specific goal in mind, *and* you have good > information about the votes of others. If you don't know the votes of > others, then your optimum vote is precisely the rating that you think > the candidate deserves, in the context of the set of candidates in > the election. > Yes, but in real elections voters do have that kind of information. We can't magically ban all forms of formal and informal polling.
> Mr. Brown continually asserts that this is "bad strategy," but he's > never shown it. It's the core of his assertion, perhaps he should try > to show it in a coherent way, stating assumptions and how he proceeds > from those assumptions to his conclusion. I don't think he's done it. > It seems fairly obvious to me. You can move the average to 50 better by picking a number greater than 50 if the current average is below 50. Since we want it to be 50, that means it's a better strategy. > Consider this. I think the candidate should be rated at 50. Yes, if I > know that a majority of others will rate that candidate below 50, and > I care about the exact rating, I should increase my rating to offset > the others. However, there is a critical assumption here, and I've > never seen it stated before. I must assume that I am in the minority, > or, more precisely, that my views are not in the center. If I am > incorrect about this, then my vote of other than 50 will, in fact, > distort the outcome in the direction of my exaggeration. > If you know that a majority of others will rate the candidate below a 50, then you know you're in the minority for wanting him to be a 50. How hard is that? Thanks, Scott Ritchie ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
