The range of collective accuracy for binary classifications under majority rule

Lu Hong () and Scott E. Page
Additional contact information
Lu Hong: Loyola University Chicago
Scott E. Page: University of Michigan, Santa Fe Institute

Economic Theory, 2025, vol. 79, issue 1, No 8, 275-300

Abstract: Abstract Many decisions and actions can be framed as binary classification problems in which an outcome function maps states of the world into one of two outcomes and in which individuals use models (interpreted signals) to classify the state. For this class of binary classification problems, we fully characterize the range of possible group accuracies as a function of group size, average individual accuracy and diversity (average pairwise disagreement) or groups using majority rule. Our characterization yields five implications (i) the range of possible collective accuracies can be large, especially for groups of low accuracy individuals, (ii) up to moderate levels of diversity, the maximal collective accuracy gain equals the maximal collective accuracy loss, (iii) possible group accuracy set-wise improves in the average accuracy of their members, (iv) larger groups increase the range of possible collective accuracies unless diversity is high, and (v) for groups to be guaranteed to be more accurate than their average member, diversity must be high.

Keywords: Collective Decision Making; Majority Rule; Diversity; Condorcet Jury Theorem; Voting; Deliberation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00199-024-01570-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joecth:v:79:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s00199-024-01570-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... eory/journal/199/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00199-024-01570-z

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Theory is currently edited by Nichoals Yanneils

More articles in Economic Theory from Springer, Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().