Rice index

Statistical measure of cohesion in a voting group

The Rice index is a number between 0 and 1, which indicates the degree of agreement, within a voting body.

## History

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It is named for Stuart A. Rice (1889-1969), Chairman of the United States Central Statistical Board, president of the American Statistical Association in 1933 and Assistant Director of the Office of Statistical Standards in the Bureau of the Budget from 1940 to 1955.[1]

## Usage

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A result of 0 indicates a stalemate, while a 1 indicates a perfect consensus.[2] The formula is often used in the social sciences, and is the ratio of the difference between majority and minority to the sum of majority and minority.[3]

R I = | yes − no | yes + no {\displaystyle RI={\frac {|{\text{yes}}-{\text{no}}|}{{\text{yes}}+{\text{no}}}}}

Yes = Number of yes votes, No = Number of votes against.

## References

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1. ^ "Stuart Arthur Rice: Student Activist to Statistical Statesman". The American Statistician. 1969.
2. ^ Born, Richard; Nevison, Christopher (1974). "The Agreement Level Measure, and the Rice Index of Cohesion Revisited". American Journal of Political Science. 18 (3): 617–624\. doi:10.2307/2110636. JSTOR 2110636.
3. ^ Rice, Stuart A. (1938). "Quantitative Methods in Politics". Journal of the American Statistical Association. 33 (201): 126–130\. doi:10.1080/01621459.1938.10503380. JSTOR 2279119.

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