1 October 2021, Computational Social Choice Seminar, Oliviero Nardi

Abstract

Social choice theory teaches us that there exists no perfect voting rule. To mitigate this problem, and to support group deliberation, we may try to justify an election outcome directly from fundamental normative principles (so-called axioms). Such a justification consists of a concrete explanation for why a given outcome is the "best" one, according to the axioms involved. In this talk, I will present a new algorithm for the automated justification of collective decisions that takes inspiration from popular graph-search algorithms. I will also describe two general families of heuristics that can be used in combination with this approach. Finally, I will illustrate the performance of the algorithm in an experimental evaluation conducted on both randomly generated inputs and inputs extracted from real-world data.

For more information on the Computational Social Choice Seminar, please consult https://staff.science.uva.nl/u.endriss/seminar/.

We are now cautiously restarting on-campus sessions of the seminar. At the same time, we want to make it possible for people who prefer to still minimise their presence on campus to take part online. If you would like to participate online, please contact Ulle Endriss (ulle.endriss at uva.nl) at least 48 hours before the session so we can set things up.