sim.race {elec}

Simulate CAST audits to assess performance

Description

Simulate a race (using the make.cartoon method) and run a CAST audit on that simulation. CAST is a system devised by Dr. Philip B., Stark, UC Berkeley Department of Statistics.

Usage

sim.race(
  n = 800,
  beta = 0.75,
  stages = 2,
  truth.maker = make.truth.opt.bad,
  print.trail = FALSE
)

Arguments

n

Desired sample size.

beta

the confidence level desired

stages

number of auditing stages. Each stage will have the same confidence level, determined by a function of beta.

truth.maker

Function to generate "truth"

print.trail

Print out diagnostics.

Value

A vector of 3 numbers. The first is the stage reached. The second is the total number of precincts audited. The third is 0 if the audit failed to certify (i.e. found large error in the final stage), and 1 if the audit certified the election (did not find large error in the final stage).

Author(s)

Luke W. Miratrix

References

See http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/Vote/index.htm for relevant information.

See Also

See CAST.audit and CAST.calc.opt.cut for methods regarding CAST audits. Also see do.audit, make.sample, and make.truth for doing other simulation studies of this method.

Examples

     ## See how many times the CAST method fails to catch a wrong
     ##  election in 20 trials.
     replicate( 20, sim.race( beta=0.75, stages=2, truth.maker=make.truth.opt.bad) )

     ## Now see how much work the CAST method does for typical elections.
     replicate( 20, sim.race( beta=0.75, stages=2, truth.maker=make.ok.truth) )