How to appease a majority?

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• Moses Charikar (Stanford University)
• Thursday 24 July 2025, 16:05-16:55
• External.

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OGGW05 - Geometric and combinatorial methods in the foundations of computer science and artificial intelligence

In 1785, Condorcet established a frustrating property of elections and majority rule: it is possible that, no matter which candidate you pick as the winner, a majority of voters will prefer someone else. You might have the brilliant idea of picking a small set of winners instead of just one, but how do you avoid the nightmare scenario where a majority of the voters prefer some other candidate over all the ones you picked? How many candidates suffice to appease a majority of the voters?  In this talk, I will answer this question. Along the way, we will roll some dice—both because the analysis involves randomness and because of a connection to the curious phenomenon of intransitive dice, that has delighted recreational and professional mathematicians alike, ever since Martin Gardener popularized it in1970.

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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