Abstract
In the situation where subjects independently rank order a fixed set of items, the idea of a consensus ordering of the items is defined and employed as a parameter in a class of probability models for rankings. In the context of such models, which generalize those of Mallows, posterior probabilities may be easily formed about the population consensus ordering. An example of rankings obtained by the Graduate Record Examination Board is presented to demonstrate the adequacy of these generalized Mallows' models for describing actual data sets of rankings and to illustrate convenient summaries of the posterior probabilities for the consensus ordering.
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The authors thank Leann Birch for permission to refer to her experiment on cracker preferences, and the Graduate Record Examination Board for permission to use primary data from the Pike Report in our example. We also thank the referees for helpful comments.
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Fligner, M.A., Verducci, J.S. Posterior probabilities for a consensus ordering. Psychometrika 55, 53–63 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02294743
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02294743