We are in a contract year at work and I am creating a list of items for the new contract. We have a list of about 30 items and I want to create a ranking list to see which items are the most important to the majority.

I requested everyone rank their top 10-15 items in order from 1 being most important to 10/15 being least important.

I now want to create a list showing the top 15 items and where they ranked. I assume the list items need to have some sort of weighting based on the amount how many people made that item a top 15 and how it was ranked.

We have 13 people who ranked the list.

Ex.

Item 1 had 10 votes with various rankings between 1-15
Item 2 had 1 vote ranked 1
Item 3 had 4 votes with various rankings between 1-15

Obviously Item 2 cannot be be ranked #1 because more people voted for Item 1 and 3.


Much appreciated.

NVM -- reread your note.

You have 30 items voted on by 13 people, each giving a value from 1 to 15 for each item with a value of 1 being most important and 15 being least important.

I assume you already have the results and have them in a spreadsheet?

Here’s my suggestion: translate the raw individual vote for each item this way: votes that have a value of 1 (most important) get changed to 15. And votes that have a value of 15 (least important) get translated to a value of 1. And every vote value in between gets transversed (2 to 14, 3 to 14 until you reach 14 which becomes 2)

Then add the translated votes for each item. Then you rank the sum of each translated votes in descending order and the item with the highest total is the most important item.

This method will weigh the ranking given by each person and the number of people together. So the one item that was ranked most important by just one person would automatically be lower in rank (depending on however many people voted for that item).

If you want to give weight to the ranking of an item versus how many people voted for it, after you translate the values, multiply it by some number such as 2. This would magnify the ranking versus how many people voted. It’s the effect of having each person have double the points. So the more people who thinks an item is important pushes that item higher versus just a majority voting an item is in the upper 50%.

I actually like adding this second modifier to the value.

When you present the results, you don’t have to go through the mechanics of how you did it. Just say it’s weighted based on the rankings and the number of people who gave it that rank. If people want, you can show the raw votes on a back up slide.

Since I’ve answered your question, I want to ask are these items parts you will use?

Because the standard ranking for inventory parts is this: you take the quantity of each item you will use in the year and multiply it by its dollar value. Then you rank them in descending order. The top 15 to 20% of your items (for 30 items, that’s your top 5 or 6 items are your “A” items (most important). The bottom 50% or 15 items are your “C” items and the ones in between are your “B” items.

High focus on your A items in terms of making sure you have enough but not too much since they take up a lot of dollars and for C items, less management is needed, just make sure you order more at a time and less frequently. Use reorder points.

For A items, more frequent reviews of status, more order frequency of just enough quantity.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:

Here’s my suggestion: translate the raw individual vote for each item this way: votes that have a value of 1 (most important) get changed to 15. And votes that have a value of 15 (least important) get translated to a value of 1. And every vote value in between gets transversed (2 to 14, 3 to 14 until you reach 14 which becomes 2)

Then add the translated votes for each item. Then you rank the sum of each translated votes in descending order and the item with the highest total is the most important item.

that's exactly how I would do it. I'd make a spreadsheet with a row for each item and a column for each person. then add it up in the rightmost column.

since each person got a total of 15+14+13+....+1 votes, you know the total number of votes for the group, and you can normalize to a percentage if you want.

quote:

If you want to give weight to the ranking of an item versus how many people voted for it, after you translate the values, multiply it by some number such as 2. This would magnify the ranking versus how many people voted. It’s the effect of having each person have double the points. So the more people who thinks an item is important pushes that item higher versus just a majority voting an item is in the upper 50%.

I actually like adding this second modifier to the value.

I'm not seeing what a linear multiplier would do. I'm not saying this is incorrect, I just don't see what it does. It's going to be the same data, just multiplied by a constant.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
Since I’ve answered your question, I want to ask are these items parts you will use?

Because the standard ranking for inventory parts is this: you take the quantity of each item you will use in the year and multiply it by its dollar value. Then you rank them in descending order. The top 15 to 20% of your items (for 30 items, that’s your top 5 or 6 items are your “A” items (most important). The bottom 50% or 15 items are your “C” items and the ones in between are your “B” items.

High focus on your A items in terms of making sure you have enough but not too much since they take up a lot of dollars and for C items, less management is needed, just make sure you order more at a time and less frequently. Use reorder points.

For A items, more frequent reviews of status, more order frequency of just enough quantity.

No. They are not consumable. Lets say this is a list of places where the group would like to go on vacation.

I’m with radioman and the first half of Rey HRH’s post.

I tend to use examples to sanity check my thinking. Because I’m lazy I tend to shrink datasets and play with corner cases.

An example: Same as OP, but only three voters and only looking at the votes on two items.

Voter #1 makes item A number one, so it gets fifteen points.

Voter #2 makes item B number two, giving it fourteen points.

Voter #3 makes item B number two giving it another fourteen points.

Item B is the winner with 28 points and item A comes second with fifteen points. Multiplying the points by two just makes the finally tally 56 to 30, not changing the result.

Now if you didn’t just invert the numbers, but instead gave greater priority to individual rankings for the first three, you might end up with something like:

Items ranked first get 30 points (2x the reverse of the ranking), items ranked second get 24.5 points (1.75x the reverse of the rankings), items ranked third get 19.5 points (1.5x the reverse of the rankings) and all other rankings just get the reverse (4th gets 12, 5th gets 11, … 15th gets 1) then you’d give more weight to the higher rankings. You could tweak this however you want, prioritizing more or less ranks (top five, just first, or whatever you want) and increasing or decreasing the delta (for example 6x, 4x, 2x, or 1.3x, 1.2x, 1.1x) to adjust how much or how little extra effect you want the ranking to have.

Me, I’d just go with the straight numbers (1st gets 15 points, … 15th gets 1), but there are a million ways to treat for whatever effect is important to you.

The other thing that can be of use is letting people know the rules and how votes will be counted. Sometimes (ie voting for board members for a company with different shareholders having different number of shares), they let you mass your votes. For example, you have three shares and there are five seats open. You get fifteen votes and can vote them any way you want, including all fifteen for one person.

Thinking about this ranking, two thoughts come to mind as to how to improve the ranking of one choice as a voter, assuming it is allowed. A voter could either rank choice C as first, second, … (all slots), or only rank choice C as first and not rank any other choices. The first gives all their ranking points to choice C, the second give their highest ranking points to choice C and doesn’t give any to any other choices. As long as everyone understands how the votes will be counted, either is fine.

.
My expectation based on your description about a "new contract" is this is an employment contract.

If that is the case, because you are dealing with people's opinions about what is most important to them and not dealing with intangible objects like inventory ~ this will become emotional to your Team. I encourage you to factor that into how you deal with this situation and not make it strictly a math problem.

You're lucky because you are dealing with only 13 people and not 1,300 or 13,000.

I suggest you do a straight ranking of each item by the highest number of votes.

......|---------Ranking--------|
Item.....1.....2.....3.....4.....5...Total
A........10.....1.....4.....0.....0....15
B..........1.....1.....0.....3....10...15
C..........4...10.....1.....0.....0....15
D..........0.....0.....6.....4.....5....15
E..........0.....3.....4.....8.....0....15
F...........0.....0.....0.....0.....0.....0
Total....15....15...15...15...15

Your ranking order with no weighted manipulation becomes:
A
C
D
E
B
F

Take these results to your Team.
Allow them to have input on accepting them "as is" or making adjustments in some way.

Here is your question to the Team.
Item A won Rank 1 straight up.

Item C won Rank 2 even if the one vote Item A received went to another Item.

Item D won Rank 3, but what about the four votes Item A received and the one vote Item C received?

If the voters had known Items A and C had won the previous rounds, would Item E had received enough votes to beat Item D? Yes, it's possible.

Do we keep these results or make an adjustment on those five votes?

If 7 people say make an adjustment, then decide how.

Does everyone get to vote again on Ranking Item 3 or should only the five people who voted for Items A and C get to change their vote if they choose to?

This is about building consensus, allowing input, understanding in the end it's more than just a math question ~ its giving people input on their career and their lives.

.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:

[QUOTE]

If you want to give weight to the ranking of an item versus how many people voted for it, after you translate the values, multiply it by some number such as 2. This would magnify the ranking versus how many people voted. It’s the effect of having each person have double the points. So the more people who thinks an item is important pushes that item higher versus just a majority voting an item is in the upper 50%.

I actually like adding this second modifier to the value.

I'm not seeing what a linear multiplier would do. I'm not saying this is incorrect, I just don't see what it does. It's going to be the same data, just multiplied by a constant.

I see what you mean. I think what I was going for could be achieved by raising the individual rank to some exponent. Just to demonstrate the intent: a vote of 1 gets 15 then raise it by 2 to give 225 while a vote of 15 gets 1 raised by 2 still gives 1. In practice, the exponential power will be greater than 1 and less than 2. This way, truly top picks voted by more than 1 person stays on top compared to a mediocre pick voted by a lot more people.

Rather than inverting the 'score', you could just say low score wins - ie, if you have 10 voters & they all choose OptionA as #1 and OptionB as #2, optionA gets 10pts, OptionB is 20.
This makes your data collection straightforward. If you try to invert on data entry, you'll screw it up somewhere. If you add a calculation column, you'll use the wrong column in a formula somewhere.....

If you want an easy visual for a percentage, just take 100%-<% of total score> and that will make the best score = the largest % OptionA = 100%-(10/30)% = 66%, OptionB = 100%-(20/30)% = 33%
It's not a direct mathematical link, but if you're putting a chart/graph on a slide, it's probably what you want to convey that is more important than the underlying methodology. That's my excuse when someone calls bullshit on a powerpoint

If you wanted to weight options, change the number of points per vote- in this case, increasing points-per-vote = less important. A vote for OptionB x2 would make it half as 'important' as OptionA. Multiplying by 0.5 would make it twice as important. I'd just modify the totals to keep it simple on the spreadsheet - or napkin if you're doing math my way.
>In the OP, it sounds like you are wanting to define the importance with the poll, so I wouldn't do this, it's just an example of how to set up the calculation. This could be construed as putting your finger on the scale in your scenario.<

I had done a poll recently with each person doing their own ranking of their 1st two picks of eight options presented. The chosen top two picks were the goal.
The 1st choice had a weighted score of 2, 2nd pick weighted as 1.

In the end everyone had their own 1st pick that no one else liked. However, the 2nd pick was liked by most of the group. We were able to reach a consensus.

I don't follow sports, but a friend says. "That's how ncaa polls work.

25 points for a #1 vote, 24 for a #2 vote
1 point for a #25 vote.

First tiebreaker is the most #1 votes."

It was very easy to set up in Excel. Send me an email if you want the file I made.

This offer expires March 1st, 2025. I don't want someone asking for it in 2027. LOL!

This reminds me of when the family wanted to rent a DVD from BlockBuster. I sent each out for their own three picks. After meeting up, we all picked the top two from that smaller option pool.

quote:

Originally posted by snidera:
Rather than inverting the 'score', you could just say low score wins - ie, if you have 10 voters & they all choose OptionA as #1 and OptionB as #2, optionA gets 10pts, OptionB is 20.
This makes your data collection straightforward. If you try to invert on data entry, you'll screw it up somewhere. If you add a calculation column, you'll use the wrong column in a formula somewhere.....

<

The problem with not inverting and saying low score wins is that if item A gets 5 people voting it as 1 and item B gets only 1 vote from one person saying it’s their second choice (2). Item A gets a total of 5 and item B gets 2, a lower score.

I followed Rey HRH's method of inverting the scores without any additional modifiers. I think it worked well enough to show what I wanted it to show. This was not an official list of any type but more of a summary to show popularity.

Thank to everyone.