The Concept of Influence and Its Use in Structuring Complex Decision Problems

Abstract

Decision analysis combines the decision maker's uncertainty about problem variables, his structure relating the decisions and outcomes, and his preferences over outcomes to obtain a logically consistent decision. Structuring of the decision problem is part of the foundation of decision analysis. The primary function of the decision analyst is to capture the relationships among the many variables in a decision problem, a process called structuring. The purpose of this research is to improve the decision analysis structuring methodology. There must be a decision analysis theoretical foundation for the methodology, so that the resulting structure conduces to a solution of the decision problem. At the same time, it is required that the methodology be useful for communicating the relationships in a complex decision problem. The author discusses these two requirements and reviews previous research related to each. Keywords: Mathematical models; Matrices(Mathematics); Quadratic functions; Approximation(Mathematics); Discretization.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1979
Accession Number
ADA183118

Entities

People

  • Daniel L. Owen

Organizations

  • Stanford University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acceptability
  • Accuracy
  • Age Distribution
  • Calculus
  • Charts
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Information Theory
  • Notation
  • Operations Research
  • Probability
  • Probability Density Functions
  • Probability Distributions
  • Random Variables
  • Reliability
  • Standards
  • Theorems

Readers

  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.