Merging ranked lists of disparate items
<p>Let me start by saying that I don't think there is an analytically defensible answer to this question, but I'm open to being surprised.</p>

<p>The situation is that I have 11 ranked ordered lists of items, and I have been asked to combine them into a single rank-ordered list.  The issue is that these aren't 11 rankings of the same set of items (in which case I could use approaches like Schulze or Condorcet) but they are lists of totally different items.  So list one may be (A, C, D, B, F, E) while list two is (L, Q, M, G) etc.</p>

<p>With no common baseline, I don't see any way to say that just because something is number one on one list, it couldn't easily be less important than number N on another list.</p>

<p>Is there some wizardry out there that I'm ignorant of, or is this as intractable as I think it is?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>