On 12/4/2011 3:30 PM, brian d foy wrote:
... The following module was proposed for inclusion in the Module List:
modid: Voting::VoteFairRanking
DSLIP: Mdpf2
description: Calculates VoteFair Ranking election results
userid: FOBES (Richard Fobes)
How about Voting::Ranking::VoteFair? That allows other algorithms to
live under the same namespace.
I understand your thinking, but that would not work well because this
would be the only module within such a "Ranking" sub-category.
Note that "VoteFair ranking" is the name of the method. (For this CPAN
module I've capitalized "ranking" to avoid punctuation, and because
italics is not available.)
Other voting methods typically have the words "method" or "voting" in
their names -- such as "Instant Runoff Voting", the "Condorcet-Shulze
method", the "Ranked Pairs method" (which does not do ranking), etc. No
other method (that I know of) includes the word "ranking" in its name.
For perspective, other voting methods only calculate the winner, or in
some cases multiple winners. They are not designed to rank the
"losers". In contrast, VoteFair popularity ranking -- which is the core
part (but not the only part) of VoteFair ranking -- "only" calculates a
full ranking, and then the top-ranked choice is identified as the winner.
As you realize, the "Voting" category will grow. However, it would be
difficult to create meaningful sub-categories. Furthermore, VoteFair
ranking does not fit within the traditional categories (for example
because it has both "single-winner" and "proportional" components, and
because the VoteFair party ranking component does not fit within any
existing category). Also, some software (that exists elsewhere)
calculates multiple methods to allow comparing different methods.
Soapbox: It turns out that the mathematics behind voting is complex.
That's why so few people have "done the math" to realize why money can
so easily be used to manipulate election results. Now, with software,
the math can be done at the click of a mouse!
Brian, thanks for your valuable contributions to the Perl community!
Richard Fobes
Author of "The Creative Problem Solver's Toolbox" and "Ending The Hidden
Unfairness In U.S. Elections"
