Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

Analysis of Voting Systems

Student Seminar
Speaker: Girish Varma Tata Institute of Fundamental Research School of Technology and Computer Science Homi Bhabha Road
Date: Tuesday, 17 May 2011 (all day)
Venue: A-212 (STCS Seminar Room)

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Abstract:  This talk will be an introduction to Social Choice Theory, which analyses methods to combine preferences of large number of voters to obtain a result that is fair . We will define some reasonable conditions for fairness, and prove the Arrows Impossibility theorem which states that no voting system can satisfy all these conditions.

References: This theory has been used to analyse an alternative voting scheme in UK, where a recent referendum about it was held
(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NS84zuf5_LQ#at=191).

Amartya Sen's Nobel Lecture
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1998/sen-lecture.pdf)

Proof of Arrows Theorem
(http://home.uchicago.edu/~preny/papers/arrow-gibbard-satterthwaite.pdf)