From: Kathy Dopp <[email protected]>
Date: January 16, 2010 7:00:19 PM EST
To: robert bristow-johnson <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality
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Robert,
I see now why you, projecting, accused me of not reading. I, however,
am not like you at all.
On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 6:39 PM, robert bristow-johnson
<[email protected]> wrote:
I give up. Both Abd ul and I have tried to explain this to Robert
better leave Abd ul out of your claim, Kathy. let him speak for
himself.
with Abd ul even listing all the possible unique ballot orderings
when
there are 3 candidates, and Robert still doesn't get it.
Kathy, you failed about the numerical stuff because it is *you*
that do not
understand.
Abd ul's list here for you again since you want him to "speak for
himself". Please try to count the number of rows in his list and
notice what he says as well:
Nine? Three candidates, to be able to report all the votes for usage
in central processing, there are 15 piles, even if we strike, at the
outset, all write-ins, provisionally, or other minor candidates
with no hope:
A
B
C
AB
AC
BA
BC
CA
CB
ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA
spoiled
and, in fact, for the one or two rank ballots above, most
jurisdictions would need to report write-ins or minor candidates at
least in first rank, before elimination. So we'd add: exhausted,
which might be sorted as to first rank on the exhausted ballot.
Total 17, actually, with only three candidates. And if there are more
than three, how do we know which ones to count? We have to sort them
all. Note that three candidates is the simplest IRV election
requiring rounds, unless there is a two-candidate election with a lot
of write-in votes.
Here is your partial, and incomplete list that matches your obviously
incorrect formula:
1332 M>K>W
767 M>W>K
455 M
2043 K>M>W
371 K>W>M
568 K
1513 W>M>K
495 W>K>M
1289 W
Is this still confusing you?
YOUR FORMULA for IRV is illogical and incorrect.
Since you think that both Abd ul and myself are wrong, why not try
listing and counting all the options yourself and notice that they
never are consistent with your formula.
Then do the same for your other illogical incorrect formula for the
Condorcet method.
you said, for 3 candidates, there would be 9 Condorcet tallies
(thinking
that i mixed it up) and i corrected you with the number 6. there
are 6
head-to-head tallies to count and send up the pike to the central
election
authority if the election were known to be decided by Condorcet
rules. not
9.
If you READ my emails, you would have noticed that very much *Not*
like yourself, I already admitted my error and gave a corrected
formula in TWO different forms:
1. n(n-1)
or
2. n^2 -n
Both of these are correct.
Both of these are NOT the same as your incorrect formula which grossly
overestimates the number of tallies needed to count Condorcet ballots.
Both your formulas are illogical and incorrect.
Everyone on this list understand that except for you.
Any help anyone?
Most people also understand that arrogance directly causes ignorance
and the main reason why you cannot see the obvious after having it
explained and shown to you in at least three or four ways now is that
your arrogance is preventing you from learning anything.
Unlike yourself, others on this list besides yourself will notice that
I immediately corrected myself in the one point where you were correct
because no matter how repeatedly often you are wrong, I always
discipline myself to be able to be open to learning from you. You
have been wrong at least ten times or more now, in your fantasies
about me, and in your numerous false claims both about IRV and about
the Condorcet method, yet I am still capable of learning from you on
that very rare occasion when you are correct about something. I am
very very different than you are in this, among many ways.
Cheers,
Kathy
and, for 3 candidates, there are only 9 consequentially different
manners to
mark relative preferences. assuming (and that is the case in
Burlington)
that some dumb voter ranks A as 2nd, B as 3rd and D as 4th and
leaves the
ballot unmarked otherwise, that is treated no differently than if
the voter
marked it A 1st, B 2nd, and C 3rd. and *that* is *no* different
(as a
ballot counting consequence) than if the voter marked it A 1st, B
2nd, and
left the ballot otherwise unmarked. by being unmarked, C still
comes in
last in any manner of counting.
Can anyone else that Robert may be more willing to comprehend,
please
try to explain how to list and count or how to caculate the
number of
unique ballot combinations with rank choice voting to him?
they won't be able to do it, Kathy. and it's not because i
"doesn't get
it". i does.
i don't want to make "appeal to authority" arguments, particularly
if such
would appear to be a self-referential appeal to authority.
but i've had a few university courses in mathematics. not so many in
discrete mathematics, but several in probability, random numbers,
and random
processes. in such courses, we learn how to formally count. we
learn how
to count how many ways to put N balls into n bins. that's where
you get
those nifty little factorial expressions. and, Kathy, you have a
handle on
it, sorta. your "15" was a meaningful count, but considering how
any of the
tabulation procedures would, you didn't realize that some piles
can be
combined, and then how to use that knowledge to adjust the count.
you're implying that, for N candidates, that the number of
consequentially
differentiable ways to mark the ballot is
N-1
SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
but, i'm saying one of the terms in that summation (the n=1 term)
is for
permutations that have no consequential counting difference to other
permutations being counted (by the n=0 term). so i subtract out
the n=1
term, and it's the correct thing to do.
N-1
SUM{ N!/n! } - N!/1!
n=0
hell, since 1! is the same as 0!, we could say that that we'll
keep the A>B
label and fold all the A>B>C ballots into the A>B pile. then it's
the
equivalent
N-1
SUM{ N!/n! } - N!/0!
n=0
or simply,
N-1
SUM{ N!/n! }
n=1
With N candidates, that is how many consequently different manners
one can
mark a ranked ballot. there can be tallies for each, those
tallies are
precinct summable, and those are the only numbers that need
percolate upward
to the central counting facility. it doesn't matter what the
counting
method is, IRV, Condorcet, Borda, Plurality of 1st choices (or
other rank
threshold). all of the information is in those piles, and if N=3
the number
of piles is 9.
take a course in probability, Kathy. learn how many different
hands in
poker can be a pair or three-of-a-kind or a full house. learn to
count,
formally.
Also, someone else besides myself needs to tell Robert how many
tallies there are with the Condorcet method as well because he
insists
on using a nonsensical formula for that too.
Thanks. Robert obviously thinks he is too smart to learn anything
from me,
no Kathy, it is precisely the other way around. you *think*
yourself as
some sort of "expert" (and Abd ul seems to accept that
uncritically). and
maybe you are about some things regarding security. but you actually
*don't* understand the mathematics of "permutations and
combinations". when
talking about "precinct summability", and the complexity (i.e.
number of
piles) of an information processing method (and that is what we *are*
talking about, it's about processing information) it is *you* who
do not
know who you are up against.
i realize that there are some mathematicians on this list and i
know that
Warren Smith is one of them. you might have noticed in the past
that i
haven't locked horns with Smith about specific mathematics, only
about
political or electoral philosophy (that sets the rules that the
math deals
with later) and i've been arguing with everyone on this list about
making
the case for some system and defending it with *specific* examples
with vote
counts that they had dreamed up.
the professor i had in Real Analysis 3 decades ago had this to say
about
some of our "proofs" that he marked wrong. it would be one of
these "given
an epsilon>0, find a delta so that..." sorta proof (like for
continuity or
differentiability). he said "*You* don't get to choose the
epsilon. The
Devil hands you an epsilon>0 and you still have to find a delta
that can
still beat the Devil." that's the philosophy that you guys need
to take
here regarding supporting election systems. it's okay to create
counter
examples to disprove someone else's sweeping claim, but creating
nicely
chosen scenarios to show how well some system works doesn't carry
water for
me.
BTW, my background is that of a signal processing algorithmist for
audio and
music. for a quarter century, i've been ABD for a PhD in electrical
engineering. i've taught at Northwestern University, the U of
Southern
Maine, and once at UVM (the "VM" stands for VerMont) as an
adjunct. i have
never met Prof Tony Gierzynski, a committed IRV opponent who has
done some
nice vote counting that confirms the numbers i have (to within 4
ballots,
but it doesn't change any outcome).
we study this discipline called "information theory" (Claude
Shannon) that
also contributes some formal methods in determining "how many bits" a
particular message inherently requires. whether it's the
President getting
on the phone to the Strategic Air Command to tell them to "bomb
the hell
outa them" or it's voters getting on their ballots that "we like
Candidate
A, then B, then C", it's a very similar information theory kind of
problem.
similar to how to reliably transmit information from ballots to
election
officials.
so someone else will have to try to educate him.
unlike you, Kathy, i'm a lifelong student. and, at 54, i've also
seen a few
things and dealt with systems of significant complexity (and
gotten paid for
it). one of my favorite contributions i like to make to the
scholarly pile
is to cut through unnecessary complexity and boil something down
to the
kernel of the issue. for audio signal processing geeks, an
example that's
public-domain is http://www.musicdsp.org/files/EQ-Coefficients.pdf
which has
later become http://www.musicdsp.org/files/Audio-EQ-Cookbook.txt
and has
about 6900 references on the web and 1000 in Google Scholar (none
that i
know of are negative references). i dunno how many hits i get in
Google
Scholar, far less than a "real" academic. i just checked and it's
9 more
hits than you get Kathy.
it's *you* that do not get it, Kathy. neither quantitative nor
qualitatively.
and you're not very forthright, either. you said earlier that you
weren't
attached to any partisan party (and given your definition, you
meant like
Dems and GOPs and Progs). i've just been to http://
kathydopp.com . it says
you're a Greenie. you implied earlier that you had no party
affiliation
(and here i was only accusing you of being a rabid anti-IRV
partisan) and
that was not true. your credibility just took a nasty hit. now
we're gonna
have to verify *every* claim you make that isn't ostensibly taken for
granted.
Cheers,
why, thank you.
and may your evening be as the same.
L8r,
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
--
Kathy Dopp
Town of Colonie, NY 12304
phone 518-952-4030
cell 518-505-0220
http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/
Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/
InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf
Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf
Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling
http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf
