Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2026/iii/paper-168/1/ii/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 168 1 ii Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
It is enough to consider three alternatives . Encode each voter's three pairwise preferences by , where means , means , and means . A valid ranking excludes and . Independence of irrelevant alternatives gives three Boolean functions for the social comparisons. Unanimity and transitivity force : fixing arbitrary , taking and constantly equal to shows , and cyclic symmetry gives the claim.
Choose the voters' valid rankings independently and uniformly. A social Condorcet paradox is absent exactly whenThus transitivity for every profile gives . Conditional on , the bit equals with probability and differs with probability , so has correlation . ThereforeThe Fourier formula, valid for negative correlation, givesby Parseval identity. Among the numbers , the unique minimum is , attained at . Equality in this weighted average therefore forces all Fourier mass onto level one. Hence is a linear Boolean function with zero constant term. Such a function can have only one nonzero coefficient: otherwise varying two coordinates would make it assume more than two values. Thus or for some , making voter a dictator and proving Arrow theorem.
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