Logical Decisions - Classweb

! Assess your preferences,
! Rank the alternatives and choose the best one.
Structuring Your Problem
You will structure your problem using three of the windows
accessible under LDW’s View menu -- the Matrix view, the Goals
Hierarchy view and the Quick Entry view.
In these views you will define the alternatives you will evaluate.
But just defining alternatives is not enough. You also need a way
to describe what makes an alternative desirable or undesirable for
your particular decision. In LDW you do this with goals and
evaluation measures.
Evaluation measures (or just measures) are variables you use to
describe your alternatives. They capture a specific aspect of your
alternatives, such as their price. You will generally have many
measures to describe your alternatives.
To organize your measures, you define goals. Goals are
containers that can hold measures and other goals. For example,
you might put related measures like purchase price and annual
maintenance cost into a goal called Minimize Cost.
In LDW, you organize your goals and measures into a tree-like
structure called a goals hierarchy. The goals hierarchy has the
broad goals like make the best decision at the top and more
specific goals beneath them. The evaluation measures are at the
lowest levels of the goals hierarchy.
You will describe how well each alternative does on each of the
evaluation measures and then use the goals hierarchy as a
framework for combining the performance of an alternative on
individual measures into an overall score for the alternative.
Defining alternatives. In LDW, you define alternatives in the
Matrix view (the View::Matrix menu option) or the Quick Entry
view (View::Quick Entry).
Initially you define an alternative with a just name and an
optional ID number. Later, after you have defined your
evaluation measures, you will describe your alternatives in detail
by how well they perform on the measures.
3-2 Section 3 -- Quick Start