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Social utility efficiency

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Social_utility_efficiency (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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The definition of SUE as appearing in this article appears to be only discussed by Samuel Merrill and no other authors (excepting SPS and other unreliable sources) in the past several decades. I do not think this meets the notability bar. Affinepplan (talk) 13:16, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep - Clearly meets notability guidelines. Has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject:
    • Weber 1978 "Comparison of Public Choice Systems"
      • Origin of the metric under the name "effectiveness", has 22 citations
    • "A comparison of efficiency of multicandidate electoral systems" by S Merrill III, American Journal of Political Science, 1984. JSTOR
      • Origin of the SUE name, in a peer-reviewed journal, has 153 citations
    • Postl, Peter and Giles, Adam, Equilibrium and Welfare of Two-Parameter Scoring Rules (August 1, 2012). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2124477 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2124477
      • "Computational results regarding the effectiveness of different scoring rules (where effectiveness is captured by a modification of the effectiveness measure proposed in Weber, 1978"
    • Evaluating and Comparing Voting Rules behind the Veil of Ignorance. Postl, Peter. L'Actualité Économique. Vol. 93, Iss. 1/2, (Mar-Jun 2017): 1-32,1A-36A.
      • "Computational results regarding the effectiveness of different scoring rules (… a modification of the effectiveness measure proposed in Weber, 1978)"
      • "According to Weber (1978), efficiency is defined, broadly speaking, as the ratio between the expected utilitarian welfare generated by the actually elected candidate according to the scoring rule and the expected utilitarian welfare generated by the socially optimal candidate." ["D’après Weber (1978), l’efficacité est définie, en gros, comme le rapport entre l’espérance de bien-être utilitariste générée par le candidat vraiment élu en fonction de la règle de score et l’espérance de bien-être utilitariste générée par le candidat optimal du point de vue social."]
    • Le Breton, M., Lepelley, D., Macé, A. & Merlin, V. (2017). Le mécanisme optimal de vote au sein du conseil des représentants d’un système fédéral. L'Actualité économique, 93(1-2), 203–248. https://doi.org/10.7202/1044720ar
      • "This coefficient corresponds to what Weber (1978, 1995) defines as the effectiveness of voting mechanism C." ["Ce coefficient correspond à ce que Weber (1978, 1995) définit comme étant l’effectivité du mécanisme de vote C."]
    • Le Breton, M., Blais, A. & Dellis, A. (2017). Élections : comportements, mécanismes et réformes. L'Actualité économique, 93(1-2), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.7202/1044713ar
      • "It follows in the line of Weber's pioneering work (1978), which, unfortunately, has been forgotten for too long. … The evaluation of the electoral system is then based on the expected value of the sum of utilities" ["Il est dans la lignée des travaux pionniers de Weber (1978), hélas tombés dans l’oubli pendant trop longtemps. … L’évaluation du système électoral est alors basée sur la valeur espérée de la somme des utilités"]
    • "Implications of strategic position choices by candidates" by R Robinette, Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
      • "I propose a refinement to the social utility efficiency metric to account for the different utility of the candidate’s chosen positions"
    • "The relative efficiency of approval and Condorcet voting procedures" by S Merrill III and N Tideman, Rationality and Society, 1991. SAGE Journals
      • "the social utility efficiency of approval voting closely approximated that of a Condorcet-completion method (that of Black) and greatly exceeded that of single-vote plurality."
    • "Comparing Approval At-Large to Plurality At-Large in Multi-Member Districts" by JA Hansen, ResearchGate. ResearchGate
      • "For a particular voting rule, we define the social-utility efficiency (SUE) as the ratio of the sum of the social utilities of all winners…"
    • "Influence allocation methods in group decision support systems" by PA Balthazard, WR Ferrell, and DL Aguilar, Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, 1998. SpringerLink
      • "the results of analysis or simulation in terms of Condorcet efficiency or social utility efficiency, or strategies that maximize a voter’s influence over the outcome are not particularly useful to us."
    • "Measuring majority power and veto power of voting rules" by AY Kondratev and AS Nesterov, Public Choice, Springer, 2020. SpringerLink
      • "however, the Borda rule provides slightly more social utility efficiency"
    • "How frequently do different voting rules encounter voting paradoxes in three-candidate elections?" by F Plassmann and TN Tideman, Social Choice and Welfare, Springer, 2014. SpringerLink
      • "To our knowledge, Merrill (1984) provided the only previous empirical assessment of the Black rule—a calculation of the social-utility efficiency of this rule."
    • "Range voting" by WD Smith, RangeVoting.org, 2000. PDF
      • "Merrill’s utility based substudy is suspicious because … All his data for 2-candidate elections had “100.0% social utility efficiency,” in his terminology."
    • "Second Problem: How to Satisfy the Condorcet Criteria" by H Nurmi, Comparing Voting Systems, Springer, 1987. SpringerLink
      • "the Condorcet winning criterion does not coincide with another almost equally plausible criterion, viz. social utility efficiency (Weber, 1977)."
    • "Making multicandidate elections more democratic" by S Merrill, De Gruyter, 1988. De Gruyter
      • "Chapter 3: SOCIAL-UTILITY EFFICIENCY"
    • "STAR Voting, equality of voice, and voter satisfaction: considerations for voting method reform" by S Wolk, J Quinn, M Ogren, Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
      • "To evaluate voting method accuracy and strategy resilience, we present the metrics Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE) and Pivotal Voter Strategic Incentive (PVSI)."
    • "The Pathologies of Voting Schemes" by J Zhang, University of Iowa, 2020. University of Iowa
      • "The difference between the achieved utility and the maximum potential utility is the Bayesian regret. A related concept is the Voter Satisfaction Efficiency (VSE), which expresses the same idea as Bayesian regret but as a percentage."
    • "The case for approval voting" by A Hamlin, W Hua, Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
      • "Recent research using computer simulations under a Monte Carlo method demonstrates that approval voting also produces winners that reliably maximize voter satisfaction (Quinn 2021)." "The ability of approval voting to select strong winners has been verified in multiple ways. The first of which is through the use of computer modeling (e.g. Smith 2006; Smith and Kok n.d.b.; Quinn 2021)."
    • "The case for score voting" by WD Smith, Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, 2023. SpringerLink
      • "Computer simulations have been used to compare score versus other election methods by the criterion of Bayesian regret (BR)"
    • "Ants, bees, and computers agree range voting is best single-winner system" by WD Smith, rangevoting.org, 2006. rangevoting.org
      • "Define the Bayesian regret (BR) of voting system E to be the expected regret exhibited by E."
    • "Vote of no confidence" by P McKenna, New Scientist, Elsevier, 2008. ScienceDirect
      • "To gauge this he measured “Bayesian regret”, a parameter that attempts to quantify how unhappy groups of people are following a poor outcome."
    • "Approval in the echo chamber" by B Armstrong, K Larson, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, benarmstrong.ca, 2017. benarmstrong.ca
      • "In particular, Smith provided results from a Bayesian regret analysis of approximately 2.2 million simulations showing…"
    • "Gaming the vote: Why elections aren't fair (and what we can do about it)" by W Poundstone, books.google.com, 2008. Google Books
      • "He began with an idea for comparing the merits of different voting systems, using a measure called Bayesian regret."
    • Not all of these search results refer to the same concept, but there are plenty of hits:
    mind sharing a few? the measure has received coverage nearly exclusively by a dedicated tiny subset of election reform enthusiasts, and as far as I can tell just about zero coverage by any professional sources in the past several decades. Affinepplan (talk) 15:55, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    please note that the OP edited the comment since the reply. I stand by my statement. Pretty much 100% of this list either contains no mention of SUE or is a low quality / self-published source. Affinepplan (talk) 04:03, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with this criticism of Omegatron's list. I checked three at random and two had, as far as I could see, no mention of this concept whatsoever. The other mentioned it in a single sentence as a possible comparison - not a good barometer of noteworthiness. Gumshoe2 (talk) 16:22, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    1. Bayesian regret is a different concept and not relevant to show the notability of SUE. and in fact, it already has its own (different) article Bayesian regret
    2. the vast majority of those results for searches with "social utility efficiency" are pulling up keyword hits for fully different concepts.
    I think you have just proved my point? Affinepplan (talk) 16:16, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No, there are plenty of reliable sources that are independent of the subject. I'm not sure if your Bayesian Regret article is about the same concept. — Omegatron (talk) 03:47, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I spot checked 4 of those sources at random from the list you so helpfully wrote out and none of them even mentioned this metric once. Please don't just bluff and write random links with the assumption that I'm not going to read them. Affinepplan (talk) 04:01, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    User:Affinepplan Every single one mentions it. I just spend an inordinate amount of time finding direct quotes for you. 😣 — Omegatron (talk) 01:17, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    1. Bayesian Regret is a different concept. Please do not conflate the two, or think that mentions of bayesian regret implies notability for SUE
    2. None of William Poundstone, Warren D Smith, Aaron Hamlin et. al, Wolk et al are authoritative sources w.r.t. notability; I would categorize them all as cranks to be quite blunt.
    3. All the remaining quotes seem to cite the same Merril 1984 directly in passing but do not themselves examine the metric
    I still remain unconvinced that this passes the notability bar. I would provide more detailed critiques of your list but it seems exhaustingly long. Could you maybe pare it down to what, in your opinion, are the most compelling top five sources and we can focus on those? Affinepplan (talk) 02:18, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge I believe a possible solution might be to merge this into Implicit utilitarian voting. Both concepts seem to be very related, i.e., how well does a voting rule approximate the best possible utilitarian welfare, with Social utility efficiency seemingly being more experimental and Implicit utilitarian voting being more theoretical and worst-case oriented. The Implicit utilitarian voting article is not very up-to-date at the moment, however updating it and including Social utility efficiency as a small subsection on precursors might be worth it. Social utility efficiency on its own however does not seem notable enough for its own article. Also pinging @DominikPeters and @Erel Segal. Jannikp97 (talk) 13:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree these are very similar topics and merging them makes sense. I am less clear what the framing and the title of the merged article would ideally be. Currently, "implicit utilitarian voting" suggests that the aim is to design systems that do well on the distortion measure, while "social utility efficiency" stresses the idea of a metric. To me, the metric framing makes more sense. DominikPeters (talk) 19:12, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree on the metric angle making more sense. Jannikp97 (talk) 13:16, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
perhaps distortion deserves its own article? based loosely on the summaries in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370215000892 and https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.00911
and the SUE can be folded in as a side note. I am happy to defer to your recommendation of a merge rather than a delete. Affinepplan (talk) 14:07, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's a completely different topic and it would be inappropriate to merge this into that. That is a voting system, this is a metric for measuring the performance of voting systems. That's like merging fuel efficiency into Toyota Corolla.
There is no problem with this article and no reason to delete or merge it; just leave it be. — Omegatron (talk) 03:47, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
there is a problem --- the problem of WP:Notability Affinepplan (talk) 04:04, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm hesitant to merge these, because these are two very different approaches (minimax regret vs. expected utility).
If they were merged, I'd agree with DominikPeters that merging in the opposite direction is probably better. Of the two approaches, expected utility is the older and more well-established concept, while relative distortion is a new-ish introduction from CS/algorithms—actually, the first paper discussing distortion (in 2006) talks about the already very long history of expected utility approaches to social choice:

most work in economics assumes cardinal preferences and takes a utilitarian approach. This viewpoint dates to the work of Bentham at the end of the 18th century, who argued that "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." [...] The utilitarian approach is prevalent, for example, in mechanism design, and perhaps even more so in algorithmic mechanism design [Nisan 2007].

– Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 19:38, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Of the two approaches, expected utility is the older and more well-established concept

again, to be clear, this article is not about "expected utility." This article is about a so-called "SUE" which of course while bearing resemblances to expected utilities is not identical.
Please, I ask you again, remain on topic to this deletion discussion for this specific topic, and do not draw irrelevant comparisons or other non-sequiturs to obviously notable topics. Affinepplan (talk) 19:45, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy keep. The idea of comparing voting rules based on their utility is social choice and welfare economics 101. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:52, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
this article is not about generally "the idea of comparing voting rules based on their utility." this article is about a particular --- nonnotable --- metric. I guess you would be referring to Utility or Comparison of voting rules#Utilitarian_models ? which yes, both of those are reasonable and notable articles & subsections.
Please focus on specifically the article for which I have nominated deletion, and not the general concept of "utility in social choice 101" Affinepplan (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Delete unless someone can demonstrate noteworthiness. I don't think this has been done so far. Omegatron's list of articles seems to include some low-quality sources and many articles that don't actually mention or discuss this concept. And Closed Limelike Curves' comment is only really a defense of the much broader topic of comparing voting rules based on utility. Gumshoe2 (talk) 16:26, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh, ok, I think I understand the issue now. From what I can tell, you and Jannikp are interpreting the question as being about social utility efficiency as a mathematical expression (i.e. actual_utility / ideal_utility). I agree that's not notable, since it's just a slightly-different way of expressing the utility. However, DominikPeters, Omegatron, and I are thinking about how the term "social utility efficiency" is used in the literature, which is exclusively in the context of the SUE of a voting rule. In other words, the article is about applying the concept of utility to evaluating voting rules (because SUE is specific to social choice).
But all of this is a bit of a digression. Regardless of the title, the article mostly discusses comparisons of voting rules based on their expected utility, and the article actually discusses many slightly-different variations on the same metric (e.g. Bayesian regret, VSE, and SUE). This slight mismatch might warrant retitling it, but not deleting the content entirely. – Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:58, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
> and I are thinking about how the term "social utility efficiency" is used in the literature,
it is not used in the literature.
> the article is about applying the concept of utility to evaluating voting rules
no it is not. it is about SUE.
can you please stay on-topic and stop muddying the discussion with unrelated commentary about the general concept of utility in social choice? this is the third time you've done so. Affinepplan (talk) 19:15, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me like the article Social utility efficiency as currently written is actually a particular metric. And based on a Google Scholar search, it doesn't seem like the phrase "social utility efficiency" is widely used in the literature at all. So unfortunately I don't follow your response. Gumshoe2 (talk) 00:58, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:Gumshoe2: Are there at least 3 sources? Yes. Are they reliable? Yes; at least 9 are peer-reviewed academic research. Are they independent of the original subject? Yes, at least 15 different unrelated authors. Is the coverage more than a trivial mention? Yes, it is even the main topic of some papers. This clearly meets the notability criteria. — Omegatron (talk) 00:41, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you clarify a particular three you have in mind? As I said, at least some of the articles you gave don't seem to even mention the topic. Gumshoe2 (talk) 00:54, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Please note that this AfD does not qualify for "Speedy keep".
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Owen× ☎ 15:55, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: One final relist.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Doczilla Ohhhhhh, no! 04:09, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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