title: Is There a Partial Consensus Ordering Between Rankings?
abstract: We propose an innovative approach to the problem recently posed by Hall and Schimek (2012): determining at what point the agreement between two rankings of a long list of items degenerates into noise. We modify the method of estimation in Fligner and Verducci's (1988) multistage model for rankings, from maximum likelihood of conditional agreement over a sample of rankings to a locally smooth estimator of agreement. Through simulations we show that this innovation performs very well under several conditions. Some ramifications are discussed as planned extensions.
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, 1958 Neil Avenue, 404 Cockins Hall, Columbus, OH 43210-1247.
authors.forename: Srinath
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sampath
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, 1958 Neil Avenue, 404 Cockins Hall, Columbus, OH 43210-1247.
authors.forename: Joseph S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Verducci
keywords: consensus; maximum likelihood estimation; multistage model; partial rankings; rank aggregation; top-K rank list