  An important problem in decision theory concerns the aggregation of
individual rankings/ratings into a collective evaluation. We illustrate a new
aggregation method in the context of the 2007 MSOM's student paper competition.
The aggregation problem in this competition poses two challenges. Firstly, each
paper was reviewed only by a very small fraction of the judges; thus the
aggregate evaluation is highly sensitive to the subjective scales chosen by the
judges. Secondly, the judges provided both cardinal and ordinal evaluations
(ratings and rankings) of the papers they reviewed. The contribution here is a
new robust methodology that jointly aggregates ordinal and cardinal evaluations
into a collective evaluation. This methodology is particularly suitable in
cases of incomplete evaluations -- i.e., when the individuals evaluate only a
strict subset of the objects. This approach is potentially useful in managerial
decision making problems by a committee selecting projects from a large set or
capital budgeting involving multiple priorities.
