Characterizing Necessary Losers to Explain Tournaments Solutions
Quick summary
arXiv:2608.23446v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study the problem of formally explaining why a candidate was not selected by a given tournament rule, by identifying sub-tournaments in which the candidate loses independently of how the rest of the tournament is completed. We define destructive minimal supports as any minimal sub-tournament satisfying this property, which in formal explainable artificial intelligence corresponds to abductive explanations for the question "Why does the loser lose the tournament?". For six common tournament solutions (maximin, uncovered set and its weighted
Key takeaways
- arXiv:2608.23446v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We study the problem of formally explaining why a candidate was not selected by a given tournament rule, by identifying sub-tournaments in which the candidate loses independently of how the rest of the tournament is completed.
- We define destructive minimal supports as any minimal sub-tournament satisfying this property, which in formal explainable artificial intelligence corresponds to abductive explanations for the question "Why does the loser lose the tournament?".
- For six common tournament solutions (maximin, uncovered set and its weighted
Why it matters
“Characterizing Necessary Losers to Explain Tournaments Solutions” highlights the need for repeatable measurement rather than a single impressive demonstration. Independent validation across datasets and clearly stated limitations determine whether a result can guide product decisions.

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