US Patent:
20080254436, Oct 16, 2008
Inventors:
Michael A. Morgia - Watertown NY, US
Pat A. Fontana - Watertown NY, US
Alex M. Morgia - Watertown NY, US
Ralph E. Roland - Silver Spring MD, US
Shawn M. Davis - Clarksville MD, US
Mark M. Piwowarski - Ellicott City MD, US
John P. Gaus - Watertown NY, US
International Classification:
G06F 19/00
Abstract:
A method of forming a consensus from a collection of ideas is disclosed. The ideas may be generated by a collection of participants, or may be provided to the collection of participants. The ideas are divided into non-exclusive groups for evaluation, with each group being provided to a participant for voting. Each participant chooses a favorite idea from the group, or selects a first and second choice, or a first, second and third choice. The votes are tallied, and for each idea a “win percentage” is calculated, which is defined as the ratio of the number of groups in which a particular idea wins the voting, divided by the number of groups in which a particular idea appears. Each idea that has a “win percentage” that exceeds a particular threshold is passed on to one or more subsequent rounds of voting. If desired, the voting may continue until a single idea is chosen as the consensus. In some rounds of voting, the groups are configured so that a participant does not vote on his/her own idea. In the first round of voting, the groups are configured so that no two ideas compete against each other more than once. A formulaic template is provided for generation of the groups, based on the number of ideas, the number of participants, and the number of ideas per group. In some embodiments, the template and number of ideas per group may be formulated using the sequence of integers known as the Mian-Chowla sequence.
