Voting in agreeable societies
Combinatorics
2012-12-21 v1 History and Overview
Abstract
When can a majority of voters find common ground, that is, a position they all agree upon? How does the shape of the political spectrum influence the outcome? When mathematical objects have a social interpretation, the associated theorems have social applications. In this article we give examples of situations where sets model preferences and develop extensions of classical theorems about convex sets, such as Helly's theorem, that can be used in the analysis of voting in "agreeable" societies.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0811.3245,
title = {Voting in agreeable societies},
author = {Deborah E. Berg and Serguei Norine and Francis Edward Su and Robin Thomas and Paul Wollan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.3245},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
13 pages, 8 figures; to appear, Amer. Math. Monthly. Related work at http://www.math.hmc.edu/~su/papers.html