Internal Seminar: Ali Seyhun Saral

Title: "Finding the best option under social influence: A comparison of voting rules"

  • Date: 03 November 2021 from 13:00 to 14:00

  • Event location: Seminar Room - Piazza Scaravilli 2 + Teams meeting

Abstract

People often vote to find the best outcome when their interests align, but their opinions differ. This type of voting is common for juries, teams, online platforms, and communities. It is shown that the aggregation of opinions can lead to accurate outcomes —leading to the wisdom of crowds —, although social influence can help or hinder this process. 

Different voting rules might affect this process, not just by how they aggregate information but also by how they collect and present information from those who voted previously.  In this study, we computationally and experimentally investigate some common voting rules about how they perform on aggregating opinions when there are underlying true values of outcomes, but they are not perfectly observable. We compare plurality rule, approval voting, upvote/downvote scheme, and Borda rule on how successful they are in finding the best outcome with and without information from previous voters.