The following study questions are intended to help guide your reading of Decision Analysis: Practice and Promise by Howard (1988).  We will discuss the following questions as a group in class.  Please come prepared!

• What are the differences between normative and descriptive views?
• What’s an example of relating probabilities to “what you know about the world around you”?
• What do you think of Keynes quote?  What is the role of instinct vs. a more systematic approach in decision making?
• What’s good about Figure 1?  What’s missing (if anything)?  What more detail would you want?
• What is a “decision basis”?  (what are the three parts)

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  Does this seem complete?  If not, what other information would you want?

• Why (both from the article and from your experience) is decision analysis not more routinely applied?
• What is the difference between a decision and an outcome?  What about a ‘good’ outcome vs. a ‘good’ decision?  What are components of a quality decision?
• What is Howard’s concern with the die rolling example?  Why is he right?  Why might he be wrong? (Note, you may want to read the EMV Summary doc on the course page to help with this.)
• What is your initial impression of influence diagrams?  Does figure 5 clearly represent the decision described?  What is missing?
• What does a tornado diagram show?
• Given what you know so far, what are the prospects for automating decision analysis?  What would it take?

And, from Keeney (1992) Value-Focused Thinking Chapter 1

• What are “values”?  (Note: he defines these multiple times)
• What is the difference between values based thinking and alternative based thinking?
• What are the reasons the range of alternatives is typically “unnecessarily narrow”?
• What is your natural reaction to a decision problem?
• How does one convert a decision problem into a decision opportunity?
• Do any of his examples particularly resonate with you as illustrative of the values based approach?  Which, and why?
• How might thinking about values in a decision opportunity relate to systems thinking?
• What are ‘fundamental’ objectives?
• Of the ‘advantages’ gained by thinking of values in Fig 1.1 (p24), which resonate most with you?

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