Mathematics Colloquium



Department of Mathematics
University of Nebraska at Omaha


WHEN:
Thursday, April 24, 2008 at 2:30 PM

WHERE:
Durham Science Center, Room 115

WHAT:


Dr. Andrew W. Swift

University of Nebraska at Omaha


will give a talk on

Winning Elections: How many votes or how you count them?


ABSTRACT:
There are many different voting systems in existence, each of which can be used to determine the winner of an election. The purpose of any voting system is to produce a result that fairly represents the will of the voting population. One of the most common systems (the one used in many elections worldwide) is the plurality system, in which each voter simply votes for their most preferred candidate and the candidate that receives the most votes is the winner. This talk will explore this voting system along with some others, to see if the choice of voting system has an impact on the winner of an election. Furthermore, if different voting systems do yield different election results, we will investigate how one determines which voting system is the 'best'.




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