Arrow's Impossibility Theorem - Informal Proof

Informal Proof

Based on the proof by John Geanakoplos of Cowles Foundation, Yale University published by Economic Theory (journal) in 2005. (An attempt to improve upon it appeared on the same journal in 2012.)

We wish to prove that any social choice system respecting unrestricted domain, unanimity, and independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) is a dictatorship.

Read more about this topic:  Arrow's Impossibility Theorem

Famous quotes containing the words informal and/or proof:

    We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.
    Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

    The source of Pyrrhonism comes from failing to distinguish between a demonstration, a proof and a probability. A demonstration supposes that the contradictory idea is impossible; a proof of fact is where all the reasons lead to belief, without there being any pretext for doubt; a probability is where the reasons for belief are stronger than those for doubting.
    Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743)