Title
Simple, Robust and Optimal Ranking from Pairwise Comparisons
Abstract
We consider data in the form of pairwise comparisons of n items, with the goal of identifying the top k items for some value of k < n, or alternatively, recovering a ranking of all the items. We analyze the Borda counting algorithm that ranks the items in order of the number of pairwise comparisons won, and show it has three attractive features: (a) it is an optimal method achieving the information-theoretic limits up to constant factors; (b) it is robust in that its optimality holds without imposing conditions on the underlying matrix of pairwise-comparison probabilities, in contrast to some prior work that applies only to the BTL parametric model; and (c) its computational efficiency leads to speed-ups of several orders of magnitude. We address the problem of exact recovery, and for the top-k recovery problem we also extend our results to obtain sharp guarantees for approximate recovery under the Hamming distortion metric, and more generally, to any arbitrary error requirement that satisfies a simple and natural monotonicity condition. In doing so, we introduce a general framework that allows us to treat a variety of problems in the literature in an unified manner.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2015
JOURNAL OF MACHINE LEARNING RESEARCH
Pairwise comparisons,Ranking,Set recovery,Approximate recovery,Borda count,Permutation-based models,Occam's razor
Field
DocType
Volume
Pairwise comparison,Monotonic function,Hamming code,Mathematical optimization,Parametric model,Ranking,Matrix (mathematics),Artificial intelligence,Distortion,Machine learning,Mathematics,Computation
Journal
18
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
199
1532-4435
13
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.65
22
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nihar B. Shah1120277.17
Martin J. Wainwright27398533.01