Chapter 1 study questions Contemporary Mathematics Fall '09
1) What are the four main voting methods described in this chapter?
Give a brief description of how each one works. Note: your description
should be complete enough that someone could use them as directions for
carrying out the voting method.
2) What are the four fairness criteria described in this chapter?
Give a brief description of each.
3) (Make sure, of course, that when given a preference schedule for
an election, you can determine the winner by each of the four voting methods.)
4) How does one rank non-winners (second place, third place, etc) in
each of the voting methods?
5) What is a majority candidate?
6) What is a Condorcet candidate?
7) Explain briefly why a majority candidate must win an election that
satisfies the Condorcet criterion.
8) Explain briefly why a majority candidate must win a “plurality-with-elimination”
election.
9) Does a plurality election satisfy the Monotonicity criterion? Explain
why or find an example in the text that shows otherwise.
10) How can we check our work in doing a Borda count on an election
with 4 choices and 23 voters?
11) For each voting method, give one criterion which the voting method
fails to satisfy.
12) How does Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem summarize what we learned
in this section about the fairness of voting methods? Answer in a
few sentences.
Last Modified September 2, 2009.
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