Consensus measures for preference rankings with ties: an approach based on position weighted Kemeny distance

Abstract

Preference data are a particular type of ranking data where some subjects (voters, judges, ...) give their preferences over a set of alternatives (items). It happens, in most of the real cases, that some items receive the same preference by a judge, giving raise to a ranking with ties. The purpose of our paper is to investigate on the consensus between rankings with ties taking into account the importance of swapping elements belonging to the top (or to the bottom) of the ordering (position weights). Combining the structure of the Taux proposed by Emond and Mason and the class of weighted Kemeny-Snell distances, we propose a position weighted rank correlation coefficient to compare rankings with ties. The one-to-one correspondence between the weighted distance and the rank correlation coefficient holds, analytically speaking, using both equal and decreasing weights.