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Poole, Sowell, and Spear -- 1992 Dimensionality Paper

Updated 25 March 2016

The files posted on this page replicate the analysis in Poole, Sowell, and Spear (1992):

Poole, Keith T., Fallaw B. Sowell, and Stephen E. Spear. 1992. "Evaluating Dimensionality in Spatial Voting Models." Mathematical and Computer Modeling, 16: 85-101.

When the Minority Margin is equal to the classification error we computed a point mass probability corresponding to the minority margin -- 0.025 - 0.500 -- for dimensions 2, 3, ... , 10.
The format of the Point Mass File is:

 1.  Minority Margin
 2.  Probability Projection is from a Two-Dimensional Space of Perfect Voting
 3.  Probability Projection is from a Three-Dimensional Space of Perfect Voting
etc.
11.  Probability Projection is from a Ten-Dimensional Space of Perfect Voting

Point Mass File (Text File, 476 lines)

When the Classification error is less than the minority margin, the file tab2to8.dat gives the Likelihood of a minority margin/classification error pair projected from a space of two to eight dimensions with an infinite number of voters.
The format of the Likelihood file is:

row 1. Minority Margin 25 (.025 to .500, but listed as 25 to 500)
       column 2 - Classification Error of 0 -- Minority Margin minus 1, minus 2, etc. -- for .025 this runs from 0,1,2, ... , 24
       columns 3 - 9 Likelihoods for 2 to 8 dimensions
row 2. Minority Margin 25 (0.25)
       column 2 - Classification Error of 1
       columns 3 - 9 Likelihoods for 2 to 8 dimensions
etc.
etc.
row 124,950.  Minority Margin of 500 (.500) 
       column 2 - Classification Error of 499
       columns 3 - 9 Likelihoods for 2 to 8 dimensions

Likelihood Table (Text file, 124,950 rows by 9 columns)