Douglas Woodall

{{Short description|British mathematician}}

{{EngvarB|date=June 2025}}

{{BLP sources|date=June 2022}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2025}}

Douglas Robert Woodall (born November 1943 in Stoke-on-Trent) is a British mathematician and election scientist. He studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge and earned his PhD from the University of Nottingham in 1969, his thesis being "Some results in combinatorial mathematics". He worked in the Department of Mathematics from 1969 until his retirement in 2007, as researcher, lecturer, associate professor and reader.{{Cite web |title=Extracts from D. R. Woodall's CV |url=https://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/plp/pmadw/personal.html |access-date=2022-05-17 |publisher=University of Nottingham}} He devised the later-no-harm criterion, a voting system criterion in the comparison of electoral systems, and demonstrated it is compatible with the monotonicity criterion by developing his method of descending solid coalitions as an improvement on instant-runoff voting. He also contributed to the problem of fair cake-cutting, for example, by presenting an algorithm for finding a super-proportional division.

== Selected publications ==

• {{cite journal |last=Woodall|first=Douglas|title=Computer counting in STV elections |journal=Voting matters |date=March 1994 |volume=1 |pages=11–12 |url=https://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE1/P3.HTM}}
• {{cite journal |last=Woodall|first=Douglas|title=Properties of Preferential Election Rules |journal=Voting matters |date=December 1994 |volume=3 |pages=8–15 |url=https://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE3/P5.HTM}}
• {{cite journal |last=Woodall|first=Douglas|title=Monotonicity – An In-Depth Study of One Example Issue |journal=Voting matters |date=August 1995 |volume=4 |pages=5–7 |url=https://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE4/P5.HTM}}
• {{cite journal |last=Woodall|first=Douglas|title=Monotonicity and Single-Seat Election Rules |journal=Voting matters |date=May 1996 |volume=6 |pages=9–14 |url=https://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE6/P4.HTM}}
• {{cite journal |last=Woodall|first=Douglas|title=QPQ, a quota-preferential STV-like election rule |journal=Voting matters |date= October 2003 |volume=17 |pages=1–7|url=https://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE17/I17P1.PDF}}