Application of Kemeny’s Median for Group Decision Support.pdfVIP

Application of Kemenys Median for Group Decision Support Hanna Bury and Dariusz Wagner Systems Research Institute Polish Academy of Sciences ul. Newelska 6, 01-447 Warsaw, Poland E-mails:bury@ibspan.waw.pl;D.Wagner@ibspan.waw.pl Abstract. Some general problems concerned with the choice of a method of group judgement for expert opinions given in the form of preference orders are discussed. A special attention is paid to Kemenys median and its modification proposed by B.G. Litvak, because of their important properties. Basic notions related to those methods are given. Heuristic algorithms for computing a median for both cases under consideration are proposed. Numerical examples illustrating the application of these algorithms are presented. A real-life example is also described. 1. Introduction In 1959 John Kemeny in his book Mathematics without numbers [9] formulated the role for determining a preference order that is the closest to the wishes of the voters. In his approach the problem considered is reduced to one, which is analogous to those of classical statistics [10] with the use of the concept of a distance between any two preference orders. This role is also called the median procedure and Slaters role in the literature on tournaments [20]. J. Kemeny concentrated his analysis on the problem of distance minimization, paying less attention to the fact that his role is adecision function possessing the important properties. Kemenys approach has been widely accepted, however real applications have been limited due to computing difficulties. The growing interest paid to Kemenys role considered as a method of determining group judgement results from the fact that this role enjoys remarkable properties