A ranking method based on handicaps

Ranking systems are becoming a fundamental tool in many areas, including the Web environment for ranking pages. PageRank, the most popular method, is based on the links stemming from a page and defined so as to be immune to their inflation, a property called intensity-invariance. This paper introduces and characterizes a new intensity-invariant method, called the handicap-based method. The method assigns not only a ranking to the items but also weights to the experts on which the ranking is based. Ranking and weights form an equilibrium for a relationship based on the notion of handicaps. The method is, in a sense made precise in the paper, the counterpart of the counting method in environments that require intensity-invariance.