Jump to content

Talk:Cube rule

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Law of large numbers?

[edit]

I don't see how the Cube Rule is related to the law of large numbers. Could someone explain? Thanks. --Allen 01:36, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

that was the Kendall Stuart argument. See [1] Rjensen 01:42, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe so. AFAIR, it has more to do with the fact that in modern industrial democracies the geographical distibution of blue-collar versus white-collar workers has a variance of about 13%. see Seats, Votes and the Spatial Organisation of Elections, Gudgin & Taylor (1979); and Geography of Elections, Johnston & Taylor (1976). RodCrosby 02:37, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The law of large numbers reference doesn't appear to be meaningful and should probably be removed. The law of large numbers states that the average of a sequence of random samples will converge to their mean provide "enough" samples are taken. It does not involve a formula and is only a statement about long term behavior, hence there is nothing to really result in a cubic approximation. A reference to the central limit theorem would be slightly more appropriate because here at least the normal curve is involved. In [2], it is stated that Kendall and Stuart considered voting constituencies (i.e. districts) with normally distributed support for a particular party. Apparently, if a certain standard deviation is used, then as support for one party changes, there will be a cubic relationship between a parties average level of support and the number of constituencies that are above/below the 50% threshold. Other ways in which the Cube Rule can be derived are also discussed. EERac (talk) 15:02, 6 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Three-party politics

[edit]

The article appears to be self-contradictory with respect to the validity of the rule for three party systems. Brondahl (talk) 12:44, 8 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The 2002 election

[edit]

I don't see how the cube rule was relevant in 2002 election. The vote ratio was 1.105:1, but the ratio of seats is only 1.117:1 instead of 1.348:1. 195.148.159.170 (talk) 18:06, 15 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]