How Math Explains the World.pdf

(Marcin) #1

NOTES



  1. See http:// www .brainyquote .com/ quotes/ authors/ o/ otto _von _bismarck .html. I’m
    a big fan of quotes, and this site has a lot of great ones.

  2. Allan Gibbard is a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, and
    Mark Satterthwaite is a professor of strategic management and managerial eco-
    nomics at Northwestern University. Despite the Midwestern locales of these two
    universities, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem was not hatched over a dinner
    table while the two were discussing insincere voting. The original result is due
    to Gibbard; the improvement to Satterthwaite, as the following papers indicate:
    Allan Gibbard, “Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result,” Economet-
    rica 4 1 (4) (1973): pp. 587–601; Mark A. Satterthwaite, “Strategy-proofness and
    Arrow’s Conditions: Existence and Correspondence Theorems for Voting Proce-
    dures and Social Welfare Functions,” Journal of Economic Theory 10 (April 1975):
    pp. 187–217.

  3. See  http:// en .wikipedia .org/ wiki/ United_States _presidential _election , _1876.
    An interesting sidelight to the election is that there was a minor third party in
    this election called the Greenback Party. Insert cynical remark here.

  4. See  http:// occawlonline .pearsoned .com/ bookbind/ pubbooks/ pirnot_awl/
    chapter1/ custom3/deluxe-content.html#excel. This site has Excel spreadsheets
    you can download for both the Alabama paradox and the Huntington-Hill ap-
    portionment method.

  5. See http:// www .cut -the -knot .org/ ctk/ Democracy .shtml. This site not only has
    explanations of all the paradoxes, but nice Java applets that you can use to see
    them in action.

  6. M. L. Balinski and H. P. Young, Fair Representation, 2nd ed. (Washington, D. C.:
    Brookings Institution, 2001). Unlike the authors of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite
    theorem, who were separated by time and probably distance, Balinski and Young
    were together at New York University for much of the period during which the
    relevant ideas were formulated and the Balinski-Young theorem proved.

  7. MathSciNet is a wonderful database, but you either have to belong to an institu-
    tion that subscribes to it (many colleges and universities, as well as some re-
    search-oriented businesses, are subscribers), or have a tidy chunk of change
    burning a hole in your pocket.

  8. See http:// rangevoting .org/ Apportion .html.


236 How Math Explains the World

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