full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alex Gendler: Which voting system is the best?

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So does that make the Condorcet method an ideal voting ssetym in general? Not necessarily. Consider an election with three candidates. If voters prefer A over B, and B over C, but prefer C over A, this method fails to select a winner.

Over the decades, researchers and statisticians have come up with dozens of intricate ways of conducting and counting vteos, and some have even been put into practice. But whichever one you cosohe, it's possible to imagine it delivering an ufnair result.

It turns out that our intuitive concept of fairness actually contains a number of assumptions that may caocintrdt each other. It doesn’t seem fair for some voters to have more influence than others. But nor does it seem fair to simply ignore minority preferences, or encourage poplee to game the system. In fact, mathematical proofs have shown that for any etilceon with more than two options, it’s impossible to design a voting system that doesn’t violate at least some theoretically desirable criteria. So while we often think of democracy as a simple matter of coutning votes, it’s also wtorh considering who btieenfs from the different ways of counting them.

Open Cloze


So does that make the Condorcet method an ideal voting ______ in general? Not necessarily. Consider an election with three candidates. If voters prefer A over B, and B over C, but prefer C over A, this method fails to select a winner.

Over the decades, researchers and statisticians have come up with dozens of intricate ways of conducting and counting _____, and some have even been put into practice. But whichever one you ______, it's possible to imagine it delivering an ______ result.

It turns out that our intuitive concept of fairness actually contains a number of assumptions that may __________ each other. It doesn’t seem fair for some voters to have more influence than others. But nor does it seem fair to simply ignore minority preferences, or encourage ______ to game the system. In fact, mathematical proofs have shown that for any ________ with more than two options, it’s impossible to design a voting system that doesn’t violate at least some theoretically desirable criteria. So while we often think of democracy as a simple matter of ________ votes, it’s also _____ considering who ________ from the different ways of counting them.

Solution


  1. system
  2. choose
  3. people
  4. votes
  5. worth
  6. election
  7. contradict
  8. benefits
  9. unfair
  10. counting

Original Text


So does that make the Condorcet method an ideal voting system in general? Not necessarily. Consider an election with three candidates. If voters prefer A over B, and B over C, but prefer C over A, this method fails to select a winner.

Over the decades, researchers and statisticians have come up with dozens of intricate ways of conducting and counting votes, and some have even been put into practice. But whichever one you choose, it's possible to imagine it delivering an unfair result.

It turns out that our intuitive concept of fairness actually contains a number of assumptions that may contradict each other. It doesn’t seem fair for some voters to have more influence than others. But nor does it seem fair to simply ignore minority preferences, or encourage people to game the system. In fact, mathematical proofs have shown that for any election with more than two options, it’s impossible to design a voting system that doesn’t violate at least some theoretically desirable criteria. So while we often think of democracy as a simple matter of counting votes, it’s also worth considering who benefits from the different ways of counting them.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
east base 3
space port 2
base wins 2
north winning 2
south wins 2
condorcet method 2
voting system 2


Important Words


  1. assumptions
  2. benefits
  3. candidates
  4. choose
  5. concept
  6. condorcet
  7. conducting
  8. contradict
  9. counting
  10. criteria
  11. decades
  12. delivering
  13. democracy
  14. design
  15. desirable
  16. dozens
  17. election
  18. encourage
  19. fact
  20. fails
  21. fair
  22. fairness
  23. game
  24. general
  25. ideal
  26. ignore
  27. imagine
  28. impossible
  29. influence
  30. intricate
  31. intuitive
  32. mathematical
  33. matter
  34. method
  35. minority
  36. necessarily
  37. number
  38. options
  39. people
  40. practice
  41. prefer
  42. preferences
  43. proofs
  44. put
  45. researchers
  46. result
  47. select
  48. shown
  49. simple
  50. simply
  51. statisticians
  52. system
  53. theoretically
  54. turns
  55. unfair
  56. violate
  57. voters
  58. votes
  59. voting
  60. ways
  61. winner
  62. worth