Open AccessA ranking method based on handicaps
Author(s) -
Demange Gabrielle
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
theoretical economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.404
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1555-7561
pISSN - 1933-6837
DOI - 10.3982/te1217
Subject(s) - ranking (information retrieval) , property (philosophy) , computer science , homogeneity (statistics) , aggregate (composite) , artificial intelligence , theoretical computer science , machine learning , epistemology , philosophy , materials science , composite material
Ranking methods are fundamental tools in many areas. Popular methods aggregate the statements of “experts” in different ways. As such, there are various reasonable ranking methods, each one of them more or less adapted to the environment under consideration. This paper introduces a new method, called the handicap‐based method, and characterizes it through appealing properties. This method assigns not only scores to the items, but also weights to the experts. Scores and weights form an equilibrium for a relationship based on the notion of handicaps. The method is, in a sense made precise in the paper, the counterpart to the counting method in environments that require intensity invariance. Intensity invariance is a desirable property when the intensity of the experts' statements has to be controlled. Otherwise, both the counting and the handicap‐based methods satisfy a property called homogeneity, which is a desirable property when cardinal statements matter, as is the case in many applications.