Expected Frequency Matrices of Elections: Computation, Geometry, and Preference Learning

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 35 (NeurIPS 2022) Main Conference Track

Bibtex Paper Supplemental

Authors

Niclas Boehmer, Robert Bredereck, Edith Elkind, Piotr Faliszewski, Stanisław Szufa

Abstract

We use the "map of elections" approach of Szufa et al. (AAMAS 2020) to analyze several well-known vote distributions. For each of them, we give an explicit formula or an efficient algorithm for computing its frequency matrix, which captures the probability that a given candidate appears in a given position in a sampled vote. We use these matrices to draw the "skeleton map" of distributions, evaluate its robustness, and analyze its properties. We further develop a general and unified framework for learning the distribution of real-world preferences using the frequency matrices of established vote distributions.