To researchers in computational science, a national election is just another example of a multi-agent system, in which players with different information and objectives all contribute to one outcome. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell, SEAS Communications.)
How computational scientists are rethinking U.S. elections-and making e-commerce smarter By Caroline Perry Postdoctoral researcher Lirong Xia uses computational science and insights from election theory to improve ranking systems and preference aggregation across the Web. (Photo by Eliza Grinnell, SEAS. Though voters may have tired of the U.S. election season well before November 6, there's some solace to be found in the fact that the voting itself typically lasts only a day. One particular kind of voter, however-the computational scientist-might advocate an even lengthier election period, perhaps entailing a single ballot question each day, with voting drawn out over a week or two, or maybe more. Unwelcome though the idea may be to the mind of the weary voter, the theory supports it, if not the practice. "You can't say, 'Today you'll come in and vote on the first issue, and then we'll announce the result, and tomorrow you'll come back again and vote on the second issue.' That's too costly," admits Lirong Xia , a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Research on Computation and Society at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). "But if you can build an online voting system and make it secure enough, then people can stay at home and just log in at the right time.
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