In anticipation of the US Presidential debate on Monday, September 26, 2016, let’s look at a mathematical model for debates, developed by Dickson, Hafer and Landa [1]. We begin by asking what is the purpose of debates? From the point of view of each candidate, it is, of course, to convince listeners to vote for him/her. Thus we should concentrate on listeners who have not yet decided for whom t...

Many r u l e s of fo rma l debate are w e l l documented, of common knowledge, and " l ooked -up " in p r e p a r a t i o n f o r planned deba t i ng . I n f o r m a l debates, on the o ther hand, are h i g h l y dynamic, are complex, and are spontaneously generated w i t h no p r i o r r u l e -book p r e p a r a t i o n . They t o o , however, are r u l e g o v e r n e d . In t h i s paper I ...

The controversies and theological debates between different religions have always been an interesting topic for the scholars of religion. These debates were usually carried out in two ways: orally, in a meeting dedicated to these debates, or in writing. One of the religious traditions criticized since its emergence and against which many refutations were written in the early Islamic centu...

Sakdirat Kaewunruen*, Joseph M. Sussman and Herbert H. Einstein 1 Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education, School of Civil Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK 2 High Speed Rail Research Group, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA 3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachuset...