NationStates Jolt Archive


The Universal Political Compass (A new paper on it)

President Shrub
31-07-2005, 03:16
I wrote another long paper, finally explaining every detail of my improved model of the political spectrum:

http://compass.fapfap.org/

I know I've posted about it before, but read it. Let me know what you think.
Achtung 45
31-07-2005, 04:00
I wrote another long paper, finally explaining every detail of my improved model of the political spectrum:

http://compass.fapfap.org/

I know I've posted about it before, but read it. Let me know what you think.
lol I think you're having a little too much fun with the political spectrum. Did you ever finish that 3-D political compass quiz? The 1 dimentional model is simple, and effective for the most part. The two axis model is a little more complex, yet still rather simple and is more effective. You can make a 100 axis model, including the most obscure political ideologies, but it'd be way too complex to be of any use. But, those diagrams sure are intriguing though!
President Shrub
31-07-2005, 04:31
lol I think you're having a little too much fun with the political spectrum. Did you ever finish that 3-D political compass quiz?
No, I nixed that idea. I began work on a political quiz, with a 3-D model that has "foreign policy," as a third axis. However, that can't work for the reason that the paper explains: Liberty is not black and white.

All political actions cannot be broken down to two categories, but three: positive liberty, negative liberty, and anti-liberty. As such, to even graph social policy and economic policy, you would require three axes each, for a total of six. So, it's impossible to plot on one chart.

So, I abandoned that idea and somehow ended up with this. At first, I decided, being that there needs to be three charts, and there are three axes each, I thought I would do a triangular graph. However, a triangular graph requires a constant sum, therefore, it wouldn't work. So, I created my own form of non-standard triangular graphing. After doing it, though, I realized that you couldn't plot a point at the ends and that each possible point is within a circle.

Therefore, I ended up by using a triangulating algorithm that takes the three values and plots them on a circular graph. The "political compass."

I'm gonna talk to some professors at my college and see how I'd get it passed along to someone prestigious, like the Journal of Political Science.