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Main Authors: Zeitlin, Joshua, Coupette, Corinna
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09046
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author Zeitlin, Joshua
Coupette, Corinna
author_facet Zeitlin, Joshua
Coupette, Corinna
contents Whether the goal is to analyze voting behavior, locate facilities, or recommend products, the problem of translating between (ordinal) rankings and (numerical) utilities arises naturally in many contexts. This task is commonly approached by representing both the individuals doing the ranking (voters) and the items to be ranked (alternatives) in a shared metric space, where ordinal preferences are translated into relationships between pairwise distances. Prior work has established that any collection of rankings with $n$ voters and $m$ alternatives (preference profile) can be embedded into $d$-dimensional Euclidean space for $d \geq \min\{n,m-1\}$ under the Euclidean norm and the Manhattan norm. We show that this holds for all $p$-norms and establish that any pair of rankings can be embedded into $R^2$ under arbitrary norms, significantly expanding the reach of spatial preference models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_09046
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Real Preferences Under Arbitrary Norms
Zeitlin, Joshua
Coupette, Corinna
Theoretical Economics
Whether the goal is to analyze voting behavior, locate facilities, or recommend products, the problem of translating between (ordinal) rankings and (numerical) utilities arises naturally in many contexts. This task is commonly approached by representing both the individuals doing the ranking (voters) and the items to be ranked (alternatives) in a shared metric space, where ordinal preferences are translated into relationships between pairwise distances. Prior work has established that any collection of rankings with $n$ voters and $m$ alternatives (preference profile) can be embedded into $d$-dimensional Euclidean space for $d \geq \min\{n,m-1\}$ under the Euclidean norm and the Manhattan norm. We show that this holds for all $p$-norms and establish that any pair of rankings can be embedded into $R^2$ under arbitrary norms, significantly expanding the reach of spatial preference models.
title Real Preferences Under Arbitrary Norms
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09046