This document discusses the details of combining voter rankings into a final ranked list. (The reader is assumed to be familiar with the TERPECA nomination and voting process.)
These notes are current for the 2023 awards year.
There's no single perfect way to combine diverse preferences into a single ranking (ask any political science professor!). The algorithmic goal is to do a reasonable job of capturing the overall consensus, where there is one, with a bias to lower ranking in case of uncertainty or disagreement. If most people rank X above Y, then X should generally come above Y in the overall ranking.
There are lots of systems for creating an overall ranking from lots of individual comparisons. Notable examples include the Elo rating system used for chess, [Instant Runoff Voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ins