On ranking merit: Applying the page-rank algorithm to the electoral process

Speaker: Robert Spekkens

Communities often struggle to rank their members according to some intangible notion of merit using only the opinions of those members and without any pre-existing ranking. Robert Spekkens, a post-doctoral fellow at the Perimeter Institute and the International Royal Society at the University of Cambridge, will illustrate in this lecture the benefits and drawbacks of using a page-rank algorithm as a solution to this problem. He will also provide reasons for thinking that the proposed algorithm, and variations thereof, will fare better than existing strategies.