US Presidents — Choice Engine

— Select a president —

🏛️

US Presidents Choice Engine

Search for a president on the left to find others most similar to them.

CE: Quadratic similarity · VSM: Cosine similarity · β = 0.5 (equal weights)

Algorithm Information

CE — Consumer Surplus Formula

CS(cand | ref) = Σ_continuous b·q_R·q_C − ½·b·q_C² + Σ_discrete 0.5·q_ref·q_cand·b + 2·X_ref − X_cand

For presidents: β = 0.5 constant (no regression DV); X factor = 0 for all. This reduces CE to an equal-weighted quadratic similarity measure. Self-rank-1 is guaranteed: CS(ref,ref) ≥ CS(ref,cand) always.

VSM — Vector Space Model

VSM(ref, cand) = (v_ref · v_cand) / (‖v_ref‖ · ‖v_cand‖)

Cosine similarity on the max-normalised feature vector [continuous dims, one-hot categorical dummies].

Features & Weights (β = 0.5 for all)

Feature	Type	β	Scaler (max)
Presidential Number	continuous	0.5	47
Age at Inauguration	continuous	0.5	78
Term Length (years)	continuous	0.5	12.1 (FDR)
SCOTUS Appointments	continuous	0.5	10 (Washington)
C-SPAN 2021 Score	continuous	0.5	897 (Lincoln)
Party = Democrat	discrete match	0.5	—
Party = Republican	discrete match	0.5	—
Assassinated = Yes	discrete match	0.5	—
Was VP Before = Yes	discrete match	0.5	—

Self-Rank-1 Invariant

CS(q_R,q_R) − CS(q_R,q_C) = ½·b·(q_R−q_C)² ≥ 0 ✓

Verified programmatically for all 47 presidents.

Data Source

C-SPAN Presidential Historians Survey 2021 · Wikipedia · Presidential records. Missing C-SPAN scores set to 0 (many pre-Gallup presidents lack survey data).