Key Polynomials

The notion of key polynomials was first introduced in 1936 by S. Maclane in the case of discrete rank 1 valuations. . Let K -> L be a field extension and {\nu} a valuation of K. The original motivation for introducing key polynomials was the problem of describing all the extensions {\mu} of {\nu} to L. Take a valuation {\mu} of L extending the valuation {\nu}. In the case when {\nu} is discrete of rank 1 and L is a simple algebraic extension of K Maclane introduced the notions of key polynomials for {\mu} and augmented valuations and proved that {\mu} is obtained as a limit of a family of augmented valuations on the polynomial ring K[x]. In a series of papers, M. Vaqui\'e generalized MacLane's notion of key polynomials to the case of arbitrary valuations {\nu} (that is, valuations which are not necessarily discrete of rank 1). In the paper Valuations in algebraic field extensions, published in the Journal of Algebra in 2007, F.J. Herrera Govantes, M.A. Olalla Acosta and M. Spivakovsky develop their own notion of key polynomials for extensions (K, {\nu}) -> (L, {\mu}) of valued fields, where {\nu} is of archimedian rank 1 (not necessarily discrete) and give an explicit description of the limit key polynomials. Our purpose in this paper is to clarify the relationship between the two notions of key polynomials already developed by vaqui\'e and by F.J. Herrera Govantes, M.A. Olalla Acosta and M. Spivakovsky.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:math/0605193 by different author

How many candidates are needed to make elections hard to manipulate?

In multiagent settings where the agents have different preferences, preference aggregation is a central issue. Voting is a general method for preference aggregation, but seminal results have shown that all general voting protocols are manipulable. One could try to avoid manipulation by using voting protocols where determining a beneficial manipulation is hard computationally. The complexity of manipulating realistic elections where the number of candidates is a small constant was recently studied (Conitzer 2002), but the emphasis was on the question of whether or not a protocol becomes hard to manipulate for some constant number of candidates. That work, in many cases, left open the question: How many candidates are needed to make elections hard to manipulate? This is a crucial question when comparing the relative manipulability of different voting protocols. In this paper we answer that question for the voting protocols of the earlier study: plurality, Borda, STV, Copeland, maximin, regular cup, and randomized cup. We also answer that question for two voting protocols for which no results on the complexity of manipulation have been derived before: veto and plurality with runoff. It turns out that the voting protocols under study become hard to manipulate at 3 candidates, 4 candidates, 7 candidates, or never

Operator-valued spectral measures and large deviations

International audienceWe study large deviation properties of random matricial spectral measures

Expressive Power of Weighted Propositional Formulas for Cardinal Preference Modelling

As proposed in various places, a set of propositional formulas, each associated with a numerical weight, can be used to model the preferences of an agent in combinatorial domains. If the range of possible choices can be represented by the set of possible assignments of propositional symbols to truth values, then the utility of an assignment is given by the sum of the weights of the formulas it satisfies. Our aim in this paper is twofold: (1) to establish correspondences between certain types of weighted formulas and well-known classes of utility functions (such as monotonic, concave or k-additive functions); and (2) to obtain results on the comparative succinctness of different types of weighted formulas for representing the same class of utility functions