On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 3:00 AM, Juho Laatu <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 25.6.2013, at 1.06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>
> > Remember that criterion compliances are absolute. So a method may fail a
> criterion yet be perfectly acceptable in real elections.
>
> I just want to support this viewpoint. It is not essential how many
> criteria a mehod violates. It is more important how bad those violations
> are, i.e. if the method likely have serious problems or not. The best
> method might well be a method that violates multiple criteria, but manages
> to spread the  (unavoidable) problems evenly so that all of them stay
> insignificant.
>

Hmmm.  I think I would like to be more cautious. I think there are
different levels of worries:

   - Having a criterion fail often in practice is worse than having it fail
   more rarely in practice.
   - Having a criterion fail rarely in practice is worse than having it
   fail more hypothetically (than actually).
   - Having a criterion fail hypothetically is worse than not having it
   fail at all

Now there are some criteria that aren't important to me at all, that I do
not value what the try to protect - and those I factor out.  But in
general, I am going to try to be very aware of the nature and prevalence of
the unpleasant results that violating criteria can bring.

In other words, until a particular system's violation of a criteria is
clearly demonstrated to me to be insignificant, I shall instead adopt a
worst case approach. ;)

-Benn
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

Reply via email to