Empathy List Archives

RH

Ross Hyman

Mon, May 18, 2026 4:50 PM

The Guardian's 100 Best Novels
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time
inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it
would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot
set..

The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from
the ballots is very mysterious to me.

They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were
voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to
produce the overall list of 100 greatest books."

I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague
description and would produce the presented list.

For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while
99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used
to break approval ties.

Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots.
But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness
is on its four.

What is their formula?

Best,
Ross

The Guardian's 100 Best Novels https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot set.. The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from the ballots is very mysterious to me. They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to produce the overall list of 100 greatest books." I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague description and would produce the presented list. For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while 99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used to break approval ties. Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots. But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness is on its four. What is their formula? Best, Ross

TP

Toby Pereira

Tue, May 19, 2026 12:22 PM

I'm not sure I'd be willing to devote several hours to try and reverse engineer their process and then almost certainly end up failing! But maybe I'll have a look at some point.
On a tangent to this, I sometimes think that these lists would benefit from an alternative version using proportional representation. So not the 100 top novels when considered individually, but the top 100 novels considered as a group of 100 taking into account the range of views. Not instead of, but as well as. I've often thought that the IMDB top 250 or BoardGameGeek top games list would benefit from this. I think it would be very interesting to see how the lists would differ - more polarising options would likely feature.
Back on the top novels, I remember when the BBC did their "Big Read" thing and came up with a top 200. It was voted for by viewers rather than "experts" but the list is very different.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtmlhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top200.shtml
Toby

On Monday, 18 May 2026 at 17:51:32 BST, Ross Hyman via Election-Methods <election-methods@lists.electorama.com> wrote:

The Guardian's 100 Best Novels
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time
inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it
would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot
set..

The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from
the ballots is very mysterious to me.

They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were
voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to
produce the overall list of 100 greatest books."

I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague
description and would produce the presented list.

For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while
99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used
to break approval ties.

Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots.
But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness
is on its four.

What is their formula?

Best,
Ross

Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info

I'm not sure I'd be willing to devote several hours to try and reverse engineer their process and then almost certainly end up failing! But maybe I'll have a look at some point. On a tangent to this, I sometimes think that these lists would benefit from an alternative version using proportional representation. So not the 100 top novels when considered individually, but the top 100 novels considered as a group of 100 taking into account the range of views. Not instead of, but as well as. I've often thought that the IMDB top 250 or BoardGameGeek top games list would benefit from this. I think it would be very interesting to see how the lists would differ - more polarising options would likely feature. Back on the top novels, I remember when the BBC did their "Big Read" thing and came up with a top 200. It was voted for by viewers rather than "experts" but the list is very different. https://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtmlhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top200.shtml Toby On Monday, 18 May 2026 at 17:51:32 BST, Ross Hyman via Election-Methods <election-methods@lists.electorama.com> wrote: The Guardian's 100 Best Novels https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot set.. The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from the ballots is very mysterious to me. They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to produce the overall list of 100 greatest books." I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague description and would produce the presented list. For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while 99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used to break approval ties. Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots. But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness is on its four. What is their formula? Best, Ross ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info

KM

Kristofer Munsterhjelm

Tue, May 19, 2026 5:48 PM

On 2026-05-18 18:50, Ross Hyman via Election-Methods wrote:

The Guardian's 100 Best Novels
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time
inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it
would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot
set..

The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from
the ballots is very mysterious to me.

They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were
voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to
produce the overall list of 100 greatest books."

I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague
description and would produce the presented list.

For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while
99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used
to break approval ties.

Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots.
But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness
is on its four.

What is their formula?

Interesting. The raw data is defined in this large minified JS script:

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/atoms/2026/03/2026-best-100-books-testing/best-100-books/v/1778864974/app.js

I've pulled the data into JSON files[1][2], which can be parsed with a
simple Python script[3]. After cleaning up the names, Quadelect gives
the following top 20 with Schulze:

Middlemarch
Beloved
Ulyssses
To the Lighthouse
Anna Karenina
In Search of Lost Time
War and Peace
Jane Eyre
Bleak House
Pride and Prejudice
Madame Bovary
The Great Gatsby
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Moby Dick
Emma
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Mrs Dalloway
Persuasion
The Portrait of a Lady
Wuthering Heights

and with Smith,Ext-Minmax (which is quite decisive, but not clone
independent or ISDA):

Middlemarch
Beloved
Ulysses
To the Lighthouse
Anna Karenina
In Search of Lost Time
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
Emma
Pride and Prejudice
Mrs Dalloway
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Moby Dick
Bleak House
The Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Persuasion
The Portrait of a Lady
Jane Eyre

The description does make it sound like they're using Approval and
Borda, so I took a guess that their Borda doesn't eliminate the
non-contenders first, hence that a candidate's Borda penalty (negative
score) is just the sum of the ranks they're listed in.

By linear programming, I found the following weighting that almost works:
score = 30 * approvals - borda penalty

where the approvals and borda penalties are calculated like this:

from collections import defaultdict

approvals = defaultdict(int)
borda_penalties = defaultdict(int)

for voter in voting_info:
	for vote in voter["topTen"]:
		approvals[vote["name"]] += 1
		borda_penalties[vote["name"]] += vote["position"]

scores = []
best_fit_scores = []

for candidate in approvals.keys():
	scores.append((approvals[candidate], -borda_penalties[candidate],

candidate))
best_fit_scores.append((30 * approvals[candidate] -
borda_penalties[candidate], candidate))

with a tweak taking into account that "The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy" has two different names in the input data.

This is accurate up to position 53. The first mismatch is "Orlando" and
"The Transit of Venus". Exact ties (both Borda and Approval scores
identical) seem to be broken in ascending alphabetical order.

(It should be possible to determine the weights more accurately, but I
couldn't be bothered to manually input 100 Approval/Borda score pairs
into my solver.)

So if I were forced to guess at the method, I would say it's a weighted
Approval/Borda score. It is a very good fit, at least.

I suppose that's a reasonable method in this case, since presumably the
voters were honest men (to echo Borda) and there's little reason to
suspect strategic nomination either.

-km

[1] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/pb.json
[2] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/gb.json
[3]
https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/investigate_votes.py

On 2026-05-18 18:50, Ross Hyman via Election-Methods wrote: > The Guardian's 100 Best Novels > https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time > inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it > would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot > set.. > > The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from > the ballots is very mysterious to me. > > They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were > voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to > produce the overall list of 100 greatest books." > > I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague > description and would produce the presented list. > > For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while > 99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used > to break approval ties. > > Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots. > But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness > is on its four. > > What is their formula? Interesting. The raw data is defined in this large minified JS script: https://interactive.guim.co.uk/atoms/2026/03/2026-best-100-books-testing/best-100-books/v/1778864974/app.js I've pulled the data into JSON files[1][2], which can be parsed with a simple Python script[3]. After cleaning up the names, Quadelect gives the following top 20 with Schulze: 1. Middlemarch 2. Beloved 3. Ulyssses 4. To the Lighthouse 5. Anna Karenina 6. In Search of Lost Time 7. War and Peace 8. Jane Eyre 9. Bleak House 10. Pride and Prejudice Madame Bovary 12. The Great Gatsby 13. Nineteen Eighty-Four Moby Dick Emma 16. One Hundred Years of Solitude 17. Mrs Dalloway 18. Persuasion 19. The Portrait of a Lady 20. Wuthering Heights and with Smith,Ext-Minmax (which is quite decisive, but not clone independent or ISDA): 1. Middlemarch 2. Beloved 3. Ulysses 4. To the Lighthouse 5. Anna Karenina 6. In Search of Lost Time 7. War and Peace 8. Madame Bovary 9. Emma 10. Pride and Prejudice 11. Mrs Dalloway 12. One Hundred Years of Solitude 13. Moby Dick 14. Bleak House 15. The Great Gatsby 16. Wuthering Heights 17. Nineteen Eighty-Four 18. Persuasion 19. The Portrait of a Lady 20. Jane Eyre The description does make it sound like they're using Approval and Borda, so I took a guess that their Borda doesn't eliminate the non-contenders first, hence that a candidate's Borda penalty (negative score) is just the sum of the ranks they're listed in. By linear programming, I found the following weighting that *almost* works: score = 30 * approvals - borda penalty where the approvals and borda penalties are calculated like this: from collections import defaultdict approvals = defaultdict(int) borda_penalties = defaultdict(int) for voter in voting_info: for vote in voter["topTen"]: approvals[vote["name"]] += 1 borda_penalties[vote["name"]] += vote["position"] scores = [] best_fit_scores = [] for candidate in approvals.keys(): scores.append((approvals[candidate], -borda_penalties[candidate], candidate)) best_fit_scores.append((30 * approvals[candidate] - borda_penalties[candidate], candidate)) with a tweak taking into account that "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" has two different names in the input data. This is accurate up to position 53. The first mismatch is "Orlando" and "The Transit of Venus". Exact ties (both Borda and Approval scores identical) seem to be broken in ascending alphabetical order. (It should be possible to determine the weights more accurately, but I couldn't be bothered to manually input 100 Approval/Borda score pairs into my solver.) So if I were forced to guess at the method, I would say it's a weighted Approval/Borda score. It is a very good fit, at least. I suppose that's a reasonable method in this case, since presumably the voters were honest men (to echo Borda) and there's little reason to suspect strategic nomination either. -km [1] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/pb.json [2] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/gb.json [3] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/investigate_votes.py

RH

Ross Hyman

Tue, May 19, 2026 8:03 PM

I thought the score would be of the form approval - weight*(rank sum)
as well but this is incompatible with My Antonia (approvals=4, total
rank = 4+5+10+5=24) at #100 and Left Hand of Darkness (approvals=4,
total rank = 8+7+10+9 = 34) at #84.
Even rank dependent weights can't help because each individual rank on
Darkness is lower or equal to a corresponding rank of Antonia.
If one removes books not in the top 100, the total rank for Antonia is
2+4+9+5 = 20, and for Darkness it is 7+5+5+7= 24. Darkness is still
lower ranked. But now there is the possibility that they choose
weights on the individual ranks in such a way as to make Antonia
lower, such as making the score for 9 count as 14. But that would be
weird.

On Tue, May 19, 2026 at 12:48 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
km-elmet@munsterhjelm.no wrote:

On 2026-05-18 18:50, Ross Hyman via Election-Methods wrote:

The Guardian's 100 Best Novels
https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time
inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it
would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot
set..

The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from
the ballots is very mysterious to me.

They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were
voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to
produce the overall list of 100 greatest books."

I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague
description and would produce the presented list.

For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while
99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used
to break approval ties.

Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots.
But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness
is on its four.

What is their formula?

Interesting. The raw data is defined in this large minified JS script:

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/atoms/2026/03/2026-best-100-books-testing/best-100-books/v/1778864974/app.js

I've pulled the data into JSON files[1][2], which can be parsed with a
simple Python script[3]. After cleaning up the names, Quadelect gives
the following top 20 with Schulze:

Middlemarch
Beloved
Ulyssses
To the Lighthouse
Anna Karenina
In Search of Lost Time
War and Peace
Jane Eyre
Bleak House
Pride and Prejudice
Madame Bovary
The Great Gatsby
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Moby Dick
Emma
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Mrs Dalloway
Persuasion
The Portrait of a Lady
Wuthering Heights

and with Smith,Ext-Minmax (which is quite decisive, but not clone
independent or ISDA):

Middlemarch
Beloved
Ulysses
To the Lighthouse
Anna Karenina
In Search of Lost Time
War and Peace
Madame Bovary
Emma
Pride and Prejudice
Mrs Dalloway
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Moby Dick
Bleak House
The Great Gatsby
Wuthering Heights
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Persuasion
The Portrait of a Lady
Jane Eyre

The description does make it sound like they're using Approval and
Borda, so I took a guess that their Borda doesn't eliminate the
non-contenders first, hence that a candidate's Borda penalty (negative
score) is just the sum of the ranks they're listed in.

By linear programming, I found the following weighting that almost works:
score = 30 * approvals - borda penalty

where the approvals and borda penalties are calculated like this:

     from collections import defaultdict

     approvals = defaultdict(int)
     borda_penalties = defaultdict(int)

     for voter in voting_info:
             for vote in voter["topTen"]:
                     approvals[vote["name"]] += 1
                     borda_penalties[vote["name"]] += vote["position"]

     scores = []
     best_fit_scores = []

     for candidate in approvals.keys():
             scores.append((approvals[candidate], -borda_penalties[candidate],

candidate))
best_fit_scores.append((30 * approvals[candidate] -
borda_penalties[candidate], candidate))

with a tweak taking into account that "The Life and Opinions of Tristram
Shandy" has two different names in the input data.

This is accurate up to position 53. The first mismatch is "Orlando" and
"The Transit of Venus". Exact ties (both Borda and Approval scores
identical) seem to be broken in ascending alphabetical order.

(It should be possible to determine the weights more accurately, but I
couldn't be bothered to manually input 100 Approval/Borda score pairs
into my solver.)

So if I were forced to guess at the method, I would say it's a weighted
Approval/Borda score. It is a very good fit, at least.

I suppose that's a reasonable method in this case, since presumably the
voters were honest men (to echo Borda) and there's little reason to
suspect strategic nomination either.

-km

[1] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/pb.json
[2] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/gb.json
[3]
https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/investigate_votes.py

I thought the score would be of the form approval - weight*(rank sum) as well but this is incompatible with My Antonia (approvals=4, total rank = 4+5+10+5=24) at #100 and Left Hand of Darkness (approvals=4, total rank = 8+7+10+9 = 34) at #84. Even rank dependent weights can't help because each individual rank on Darkness is lower or equal to a corresponding rank of Antonia. If one removes books not in the top 100, the total rank for Antonia is 2+4+9+5 = 20, and for Darkness it is 7+5+5+7= 24. Darkness is still lower ranked. But now there is the possibility that they choose weights on the individual ranks in such a way as to make Antonia lower, such as making the score for 9 count as 14. But that would be weird. On Tue, May 19, 2026 at 12:48 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet@munsterhjelm.no> wrote: > > On 2026-05-18 18:50, Ross Hyman via Election-Methods wrote: > > The Guardian's 100 Best Novels > > https://www.theguardian.com/books/ng-interactive/2026/may/12/the-100-best-novels-of-all-time > > inlcudes 172 ballots ranking voters' 10 favorite novels. I think it > > would be interesting to use different voting methods on this ballot > > set.. > > > > The method the Guardian used to determine their l00 novel list from > > the ballots is very mysterious to me. > > > > They state "We scored the titles according to how often they were > > voted for, and then added a weighting based on individual rankings to > > produce the overall list of 100 greatest books." > > > > I played around and could not find anything that fit this vague > > description and would produce the presented list. > > > > For example, My Antonia in 100th place is ranked on 4 ballots while > > 99, The Go-Between is ranked on 3. So rankings are not just being used > > to break approval ties. > > > > Then look at 89 The Left Hand of Darkness, also ranked on 4 ballots. > > But Antonia at 100 is higher ranked on its four ballots than Darkness > > is on its four. > > > > What is their formula? > > Interesting. The raw data is defined in this large minified JS script: > > https://interactive.guim.co.uk/atoms/2026/03/2026-best-100-books-testing/best-100-books/v/1778864974/app.js > > I've pulled the data into JSON files[1][2], which can be parsed with a > simple Python script[3]. After cleaning up the names, Quadelect gives > the following top 20 with Schulze: > > 1. Middlemarch > 2. Beloved > 3. Ulyssses > 4. To the Lighthouse > 5. Anna Karenina > 6. In Search of Lost Time > 7. War and Peace > 8. Jane Eyre > 9. Bleak House > 10. Pride and Prejudice > Madame Bovary > 12. The Great Gatsby > 13. Nineteen Eighty-Four > Moby Dick > Emma > 16. One Hundred Years of Solitude > 17. Mrs Dalloway > 18. Persuasion > 19. The Portrait of a Lady > 20. Wuthering Heights > > and with Smith,Ext-Minmax (which is quite decisive, but not clone > independent or ISDA): > > 1. Middlemarch > 2. Beloved > 3. Ulysses > 4. To the Lighthouse > 5. Anna Karenina > 6. In Search of Lost Time > 7. War and Peace > 8. Madame Bovary > 9. Emma > 10. Pride and Prejudice > 11. Mrs Dalloway > 12. One Hundred Years of Solitude > 13. Moby Dick > 14. Bleak House > 15. The Great Gatsby > 16. Wuthering Heights > 17. Nineteen Eighty-Four > 18. Persuasion > 19. The Portrait of a Lady > 20. Jane Eyre > > The description does make it sound like they're using Approval and > Borda, so I took a guess that their Borda doesn't eliminate the > non-contenders first, hence that a candidate's Borda penalty (negative > score) is just the sum of the ranks they're listed in. > > By linear programming, I found the following weighting that *almost* works: > score = 30 * approvals - borda penalty > > where the approvals and borda penalties are calculated like this: > > from collections import defaultdict > > approvals = defaultdict(int) > borda_penalties = defaultdict(int) > > for voter in voting_info: > for vote in voter["topTen"]: > approvals[vote["name"]] += 1 > borda_penalties[vote["name"]] += vote["position"] > > scores = [] > best_fit_scores = [] > > for candidate in approvals.keys(): > scores.append((approvals[candidate], -borda_penalties[candidate], > candidate)) > best_fit_scores.append((30 * approvals[candidate] - > borda_penalties[candidate], candidate)) > > with a tweak taking into account that "The Life and Opinions of Tristram > Shandy" has two different names in the input data. > > This is accurate up to position 53. The first mismatch is "Orlando" and > "The Transit of Venus". Exact ties (both Borda and Approval scores > identical) seem to be broken in ascending alphabetical order. > > (It should be possible to determine the weights more accurately, but I > couldn't be bothered to manually input 100 Approval/Borda score pairs > into my solver.) > > So if I were forced to guess at the method, I would say it's a weighted > Approval/Borda score. It is a very good fit, at least. > > I suppose that's a reasonable method in this case, since presumably the > voters were honest men (to echo Borda) and there's little reason to > suspect strategic nomination either. > > -km > > [1] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/pb.json > [2] https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/gb.json > [3] > https://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/guardian_best_100_2026/investigate_votes.py

KM

Kristofer Munsterhjelm

Wed, May 20, 2026 7:23 PM

On 2026-05-19 22:03, Ross Hyman wrote:

I thought the score would be of the form approval - weight*(rank sum)
as well but this is incompatible with My Antonia (approvals=4, total
rank = 4+5+10+5=24) at #100 and Left Hand of Darkness (approvals=4,
total rank = 8+7+10+9 = 34) at #84.
Even rank dependent weights can't help because each individual rank on
Darkness is lower or equal to a corresponding rank of Antonia.
If one removes books not in the top 100, the total rank for Antonia is
2+4+9+5 = 20, and for Darkness it is 7+5+5+7= 24. Darkness is still
lower ranked. But now there is the possibility that they choose
weights on the individual ranks in such a way as to make Antonia
lower, such as making the score for 9 count as 14. But that would be
weird.

The really weird part is that the results are so close. If you create a
custom method (e.g. a Nanson hybrid or something with non-Borda
positional weights), you'd expect it to disagree more than once, but...

I ran the full data set through the solver and it found that
31 * approvals - rank sum
(unless there's a bug) matches the order for every book except for My
Antonia up to tie-breaking. However, if My Antonia's Approval count is
lowered to three, then it, too, matches.

More specifically, near the end, after excluding ties, we have

Vote count Rank sum Desired rank
4 34 89 // The Left Hand of Darkness
3 7 90 // Jacob's Room
3 10 91 // Life and Fate
3 11 92 // Sentimental Education
3 12 95 // The Return of the Native
3 13 96 // Pedro Páramo
3 14 99 // The Go-Between
4 24 100 // My Ántonia

These appear to have decreasing vote counts and increasing rank sums
within the same vote count bracket, except for My Antonia at the very
end. But 24 > 14, so if it were counted as 3 instead, we would get the
proper order.

This is quite odd. Maybe there's a bug in their software? It's hard to
imagine a method that's not weighted Approval,Borda but is that close.

About the only thing I can think of is if their tie-breaker is defined
as some ranking of every candidate submitted, that they add some
multiple of the tie-breaker rank to the score. Then My Antonia could be
at the very end, so that its rank sum pushes it down; but this feels
kind of arbitrary -- why would it affect just My Antonia and not
overturn any of the other non-tied results?

The tie-breaker doesn't seem to be strictly alphabetical either.
Catch-22, The Road, and The Go-Between all have the same Approval and
vote counts (namely (3, 14)), but they're listed in that order, whereas
a tie-breaker would put The Go-Between second and The Road third of the
three.

-km

On 2026-05-19 22:03, Ross Hyman wrote: > I thought the score would be of the form approval - weight*(rank sum) > as well but this is incompatible with My Antonia (approvals=4, total > rank = 4+5+10+5=24) at #100 and Left Hand of Darkness (approvals=4, > total rank = 8+7+10+9 = 34) at #84. > Even rank dependent weights can't help because each individual rank on > Darkness is lower or equal to a corresponding rank of Antonia. > If one removes books not in the top 100, the total rank for Antonia is > 2+4+9+5 = 20, and for Darkness it is 7+5+5+7= 24. Darkness is still > lower ranked. But now there is the possibility that they choose > weights on the individual ranks in such a way as to make Antonia > lower, such as making the score for 9 count as 14. But that would be > weird. The really weird part is that the results are so close. If you create a custom method (e.g. a Nanson hybrid or something with non-Borda positional weights), you'd expect it to disagree more than once, but... I ran the full data set through the solver and it found that 31 * approvals - rank sum (unless there's a bug) matches the order for every book except for My Antonia up to tie-breaking. However, if My Antonia's Approval count is lowered to three, then it, too, matches. More specifically, near the end, after excluding ties, we have Vote count Rank sum Desired rank 4 34 89 // The Left Hand of Darkness 3 7 90 // Jacob's Room 3 10 91 // Life and Fate 3 11 92 // Sentimental Education 3 12 95 // The Return of the Native 3 13 96 // Pedro Páramo 3 14 99 // The Go-Between 4 24 100 // My Ántonia These appear to have decreasing vote counts and increasing rank sums within the same vote count bracket, except for My Antonia at the very end. But 24 > 14, so if it were counted as 3 instead, we would get the proper order. This is quite odd. Maybe there's a bug in their software? It's hard to imagine a method that's not weighted Approval,Borda but is *that* close. About the only thing I can think of is if their tie-breaker is defined as some ranking of every candidate submitted, that they add some multiple of the tie-breaker rank to the score. Then My Antonia could be at the very end, so that its rank sum pushes it down; but this feels kind of arbitrary -- why would it affect *just* My Antonia and not overturn any of the other non-tied results? The tie-breaker doesn't seem to be strictly alphabetical either. Catch-22, The Road, and The Go-Between all have the same Approval and vote counts (namely (3, 14)), but they're listed in that order, whereas a tie-breaker would put The Go-Between second and The Road third of the three. -km

RH

Ross Hyman

Thu, May 21, 2026 7:45 PM

Matthew Aldridge comes to the same conclusion for the voting method
and that My Antonia is an error:
https://mpaldridge.github.io/blog/guardian-novels.html He also found
some books with variant titles that were not properly counted.

On Wed, May 20, 2026 at 2:23 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
km-elmet@munsterhjelm.no wrote: