Logical Decisions - Classweb

On the other hand, the weights of the different measures, the
interactions between them, and your attitudes towards risk are
inherently subjective. Reasonable people can have disagreements
on these subjects.
You can't generally eliminate these subjective parts of a decision.
LDW provides methods for logically dealing with both the
objective and subjective parts of a decision while keeping them
well separated.
The types of decisions that you can address using LDW might
best be described as “Choices.” A choice has the following
characteristics:
! You will select among a finite set of alternatives.
! All of the choices are “feasible,” meaning that you could
actually choose each one if you wanted.
! No evaluation measures have levels that are
unacceptable.
! You need to consider at least two evaluation criteria
simultaneously.
! You will choose an entire alternative at a single time.
That is, you won’t choose part of an alternative
now and the rest of it later.
Many decisions don’t meet one or more of these caveats, meaning
that LDW may not be the best tool to analyze them.
For example, optimization problems such as the best mix of
products to produce at an oil refinery have a practically infinite
number of possible product mixes (alternatives). These types of
problems are often addressed by tools such as linear
programming.
Another example is multi-stage decisions, such as a new product
introduction. In these problems you might want to make a
preliminary decision to do test marketing and then decide later
about a full product rollout based on the test results. These types
of problems are often analyzed with tools such as decision trees
and influence diagrams.
9-2 Section 9 -- In Depth