From the WSJ:
My print column examines rule changes for this year's voting for nominees for the Academy Award for best picture. The Academy must balance competing priorities in constructing its voting procedure, and this year it changed the rules to place more emphasis on first-place votes. Award analysts report that those, and in some cases second-place votes, will determine the nominees, which can number between five and 10. These competing priorities, and the many possible voting methods, make for a fertile area of mathematical study. Donald Saari, a mathematician at the University of California, Irvine, came to the field from mathematical physics, "so when I started to examine this field, I was able to use techniques from chaotic dynamics to identify the list of outcomes that can go wrong. It turned out to be much worse than I had anticipated."

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