Douglas Robert Woodall (born November 1943 in

Stoke-on-Trent Stoke-on-Trent (often abbreviated to Stoke) is a city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Staffordshire, England. It has an estimated population of 259,965 as of 2022, making it the largest settlement in Staffordshire ...

) is a British mathematician and election scientist. He studied mathematics at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and earned his PhD from the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...

in 1969, his thesis being "Some results in combinatorial mathematics". He worked in the Department of Mathematics from 1969 until his retirement in 2007, as researcher, lecturer, associate professor and reader. He devised the

later-no-harm criterion Later-no-harm is a property of some Ranked voting, ranked-choice voting systems, first described by Douglas Woodall. In later-no-harm systems, increasing the rating or rank of a candidate ranked below the winner of an election cannot cause a high ...

, a

voting system criterion This article discusses the methods and results of comparing different electoral systems. There are two broad methods to compare voting systems: # Metrics of voter satisfaction, either through simulation or survey. # Adherence to logical criteria. ...

in the

comparison of electoral systems This article discusses the methods and results of comparing different electoral system, electoral systems. There are two broad methods to compare voting systems: # Metrics of voter satisfaction, either through simulation or survey. # #Logical crit ...

, and demonstrated it is compatible with the

monotonicity criterion Electoral system criteria In social choice, the negative response, perversity, or additional support paradox is a pathological behavior of some voting rules where a candidate loses as a result of having too much support (or wins because of in ...

by developing his method of descending solid coalitions as an improvement on

instant-runoff voting Instant-runoff voting (IRV; ranked-choice voting (RCV), preferential voting, alternative vote) is a single-winner ranked voting election system where Sequential loser method, one or more eliminations are used to simulate Runoff (election), ...

. He also contributed to the problem of

fair cake-cutting Fair cake-cutting is a kind of fair division problem. The problem involves a ''heterogeneous'' resource, such as a cake with different toppings, that is assumed to be ''divisible'' – it is possible to cut arbitrarily small pieces of it without ...

, for example, by presenting an algorithm for finding a

super-proportional division A strongly proportional division (sometimes called super-proportional division or super-fair division) is a kind of a fair division Fair division is the problem in game theory of dividing a set of resources among several people who have an Entitl ...

Selected publications

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References

External links

* * 1943 births Living people Psephologists Voting theorists Combinatorialists British mathematicians Alumni of the University of Cambridge Alumni of the University of Nottingham Academics of the University of Nottingham People from Stoke-on-Trent Fair division researchers {{UK-mathematician-stub

Selected publications

See also

References

External links