I think it would be useful to have a list of scenarios, which can be used to evaluate the performance of various methods of selecting a winner. For each scenario, there should be almost unanimous agreement on the best choice, and the methods will need to be able to make the correct selection. In some situations, there may be two or more outcomes that are pretty much equally desired by the voters.

For example, in Alex Gendler's TED-Ed video, https://youtu.be/PaxVCsnox_4, it seems to me that everyone will agree that North base is the spaceport location that will result in the greatest amount of satisfaction for the greatest number of people.

If I'm correct, about the nearly unanimous agreement, then methods can be compared based on how well they do with a variety of scenarios with an established best outcome consensus.

If I'm wrong, and people cannot agree on what the best choice is, then it seems to me that our quest to find a method is striving to achieve the impossible.

Is the program that you're using to analyze scenarios and display things available online?

I thought it was very good. I've never seen anything like the neurodiversity section before. I think it's very good to have, and is well worded.

@tec Your programming skills are FAR beyond what I can do. I started exploring voting options about 7 months ago, and seeing that IRV sometimes selects an outcome that is clearly not the best choice, it occurred to me that looking at the second choice of the ballots of the runner up made sense. That led to a sort of double-elimination approach. Using a spreadsheet to lay out a few scenarios, it appeared that the approach had some promise. Unable to find anyone to help me, I managed to create some php webpages that can be used to evaluate scenarios. Testing with that I found some anomalies so progressed to a hybrid approach. So far, it's checking out just fine.

I like the visual layout that you provided, and I haven't seen anything with the "indifference lines". It's similar to this: https://ncase.me/ballot/, which you're probably familiar with. I'd like to be able to start with ballot numbers and then have them displayed, rather than being limited to manipulating the image (which I think is fantastic too).

I was wondering too if your program calculates the distance between the two other options and then sets the second choice as the closest one.

Here's a link to the crude pages that I put together: https://wethepeople.ca/WTP_IRV-DEp1tester.php

I would definitely like to collaborate with you on an "evaluation framework".

@NevinBR Thank you for the Game Theory Voting link. I see that there is an assumption that when a Condorcet selection exists that it's the best choice. I think there are situations where that is NOT a correct assumption. I tried to modify the scenario that the authors, Rivest and Shen, used, but it wasn't working out very well, so I simplified one of the scenarios that I had previously come across, which was from using randomly generated numbers.

Scenario: There are 4 candidates and 13, 138 voters. With FPTP, candidate B gets 3,900 votes, C 3,547, D 3,456 and A 2,325. B wins Condorcet buy 2 votes, 6570/6568, over each of the other candidates. At first blush, B seems to be clearly the best choice.

I exaggerated the randomly generated numbers into a scenario where ALL of the voters that picked B as their first choice picked D as their second choice. So, in a head to head with B and D, B got 2 more votes than D, but D was the second choice of all 3,900 supporters of B. Conversely, only 639 of the 3,456 D supporters chose B as their second choice.

It seems to me that candidate D is preferred by the most people to the greatest degree.

I didn't try to understand all of the Game Theory details, but it seems to me that there is a way to modify it so that it considers this in the weighting and sets the probabilities accordingly.

I'm wondering what people think of this. (Both of the assertion of D being the best choice, and the potential of Game Theory to account for this.)

Here are the full numbers for the scenario:
0:Option A
819:Option A>Option B>Option C>Option D
52:Option A>Option B>Option D>Option C
141:Option A>Option C>Option B>Option D
898:Option A>Option C>Option D>Option B
116:Option A>Option D>Option B>Option C
299:Option A>Option D>Option C>Option B
0:Option B
0:Option B>Option A>Option C>Option D
0:Option B>Option A>Option D>Option C
0:Option B>Option C>Option A>Option D
0:Option B>Option C>Option D>Option A
1800:Option B>Option D>Option A>Option C
2100:Option B>Option D>Option C>Option A
0:Option C
988:Option C>Option A>Option B>Option D
658:Option C>Option A>Option D>Option B
3:Option C>Option B>Option A>Option D
667:Option C>Option B>Option D>Option A
473:Option C>Option D>Option A>Option B
668:Option C>Option D>Option B>Option A
0:Option D
1044:Option D>Option A>Option B>Option C
445:Option D>Option A>Option C>Option B
382:Option D>Option B>Option A>Option C
257:Option D>Option B>Option C>Option A
635:Option D>Option C>Option A>Option B
693:Option D>Option C>Option B>Option A

@tec Your programming skills are FAR beyond what I can do. I started exploring voting options about 7 months ago, and seeing that IRV sometimes selects an outcome that is clearly not the best choice, it occurred to me that looking at the second choice of the ballots of the runner up made sense. That led to a sort of double-elimination approach. Using a spreadsheet to lay out a few scenarios, it appeared that the approach had some promise. Unable to find anyone to help me, I managed to create some php webpages that can be used to evaluate scenarios. Testing with that I found some anomalies so progressed to a hybrid approach. So far, it's checking out just fine.

I like the visual layout that you provided, and I haven't seen anything with the "indifference lines". It's similar to this: https://ncase.me/ballot/, which you're probably familiar with. I'd like to be able to start with ballot numbers and then have them displayed, rather than being limited to manipulating the image (which I think is fantastic too).

I was wondering too if your program calculates the distance between the two other options and then sets the second choice as the closest one.

Here's a link to the crude pages that I put together: https://wethepeople.ca/WTP_IRV-DEp1tester.php

I would definitely like to collaborate with you on an "evaluation framework".

Is the program that you're using to analyze scenarios and display things available online?

Thanks Keith for commenting. I'd like to know in some detail how each of the 5 criteria are evaluated. In particular, "Accurate". How is the bull's eye, so to speak, determined for a particular scenario?

I think it would be useful to have a list of scenarios, which can be used to evaluate the performance of various methods of selecting a winner. For each scenario, there should be almost unanimous agreement on the best choice, and the methods will need to be able to make the correct selection. In some situations, there may be two or more outcomes that are pretty much equally desired by the voters.

For example, in Alex Gendler's TED-Ed video, https://youtu.be/PaxVCsnox_4, it seems to me that everyone will agree that North base is the spaceport location that will result in the greatest amount of satisfaction for the greatest number of people.

If I'm correct, about the nearly unanimous agreement, then methods can be compared based on how well they do with a variety of scenarios with an established best outcome consensus.

If I'm wrong, and people cannot agree on what the best choice is, then it seems to me that our quest to find a method is striving to achieve the impossible.

I read through the entire thing. Again, I'm not an expert, but I thought it was all very good. I'm not a fan of auto renews though.

I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but I thought it was very good.

I thought it was very good. I've never seen anything like the neurodiversity section before. I think it's very good to have, and is well worded.

Wednesday the 17th is fine with me. FYI, the second line of the Agenda has the wrong year. "2/17/20 Agenda - 7:30pm pacific"