I use a relative preference system in a program I wrote. In this preference system, users are allowed to rate things using two preference values: A is greater than B OR A is much greater than B.
In order for my software to use this data, I currently represent the data using numerical values. In this way, the top rated item is given a value of 1, and the other items are given values depending on their relationship placement in the graph. Items greater than have values of 1 more than the next item, and items much greater have values of around 100 greater. So the following graph would be given the following values.
This is represented numerically in the following way: A (1), B (2), C (2), D (100), E (101).
I am looking for a software library through which I would be able to convert the graph preferences into numerical values and need to think about what this library needs to be able to do. I can see that I need to look out for circular paths in the graphs, which would definitely cause problems for preferences. But I wonder if there are any other important things that I need to look out for when converting the preferences?