Introduction
The term decision analysis identifies a collection of technologies for assisting individuals and organizations in the performance of difficult inferences and decisions. Probabilistic inference is a natural element of any choice made in the face of uncertainty. No single discipline can lay claim to all advancements made in support of these technologies. Operations research, probability theory, statistics, economics, psychology, artificial intelligence, and other disciplines have contributed valuable ideas now being exploited in various ways by individuals in many governmental, industrial, and military organizations. As the term decision analysis suggests, complex inference and choice tasks are decomposed into smaller and presumably more manageable elements, some of which are probabilistic and others preferential or value-related. The basic strategy employed in decision analysis is divide and conquer. The presumption is that individuals or groups find it more difficult to...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Breese, J., & Heckerman, D. (1999). Decision-theoretic troubleshooting: A framework for repair and experiment. In J. Shanteau, B. Mellers, & D. Schum (Eds.), Decision science and technology: Reflections on the contributions of ward Edwards (pp. 271–287). Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Clemen, R. T. (1991). Making hard decisions: An introduction to decision analysis. Boston: PWS-Kent.
Cohen, L. J. (1977). The probable and the provable. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Cohen, L. J. (1989). An introduction to the philosophy of induction and probability. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
De Finetti, B. (1972). Probability, induction, and statistics: The art of guessing. New York: Wiley.
Dreyfus, S. (1984). The risks ! and benefits ? Of risk-benefit analysis. Omega, 12, 335–340.
Edwards, W. (1954). The theory of decision making. Psychological Bulletin, 41, 380–417.
Edwards, W. (1961). Behavioral decision theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 12, 473–498.
Edwards, W. (1962). Dynamic decision theory and probabilistic information processing. Human Factors, 4, 59–73.
Fishburn, P. (1999). The making of decision theory. In J. Shanteau, B. Mellers, & D. Schum (Eds.), Decision science and technology: Reflections on the contributions of Ward Edwards (pp. 369–388). Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Hammond, J., Keeney, R., & Raiffa, H. (2002). Smart choices: A practical guide to making better decisions. New York: Random House.
Howard, R. (1966). Decision analysis: Applied decision theory. In D. B. Hertz & J. Melese (Eds.), Proceedings fourth international conference on operational research. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
Howard, R. (1968). The foundations of decision analysis. IEEE Transactions on Systems Science and Cybernetics, SSC-4, 211–219.
Howard, R., & Matheson, J. (1981). Influence diagrams. In R. Howard & J. Matheson (Eds.), The principles and applications of decision analysis (Vol. 2). Menlo Park, CA: Strategic Decisions Group, 1984.
Keeney, R. (1992). Value-focused thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Keeney, R., & Raiffa, H. (1976). Decision with multiple objectives: Preferences and value tradeoffs. New York: Wiley.
Mellor, D. H. (1990). F.P. Ramsey: Philosophical papers. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Neapolitan, R. (1990). Probabilistic reasoning in expert systems: Theory and algorithms. New York: Wiley.
Pearl, J. (1988). Probabilistic reasoning in intelligent systems: Networks of plausible reasoning. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Phillips, L. (1982). Requisite decision modeling: A case study. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 33, 303–311.
Phillips, L. (1984). A theory of requisite decision models. Acta Psychologica, 56, 29–48.
Raiffa, H. (1968). Decision analysis: Introductory lectures on choices under uncertainty. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Rescher, N. (1988). Rationality: A philosophical inquiry into the nature and rationale of reason. Oxford: Clarendon.
Sage, A. (1991). Decision support systems engineering. New York: Wiley.
Savage, L. J. (1954). The foundations of statistics. New York: Wiley.
Schum, D. (1990). Inference networks and their many subtle properties. Information and Decision Technologies, 16, 69–98.
Schum, D. (1994). Evidential foundations of probabilistic reasoning. New York: Wiley.
Shachter, R. (1986). Evaluating influence diagrams. Operations Research, 34, 871–882.
Shachter, R., & Heckerman, D. (1987). Thinking backward for knowledge acquisition. AI Magazine, Fall, 8, 55–61.
Shafer, G. (1976). A mathematical theory of evidence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Shafer, G. (1986). “Savage revisited,” statistical science (Vol. 1, pp. 463–501). Hayward, CA: Institute of Mathematical Statistics (with comments).
Shanteau, J., Mellers, B., & Schum, D. (1999). Decision science and technology: Reflections on the contributions of Ward Edwards. Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Smith, J. Q. (1988). Decision analysis: A Bayesian approach. London: Chapman and Hall.
Tocher, K. (1977). Planning systems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, A 287, 425–441.
Twining, W. (1990). Rethinking evidence: Exploratory essays. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
von Neumann, J., & Morgenstern, O. (1947). Theory of games and economic behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
von Winterfeldt, D., & Edwards, W. (1986). Decision analysis and behavioral research. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Watson, S. R., & Buede, D. (1987). Decision synthesis: The principles and practice of decision analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Watson, S. R., Weiss, J. J., & Donnell, M. L. (1979). Fuzzy decision analysis. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC-9 (1), 1–9.
Winkler, R. L. (1972). Introduction to Bayesian inference and decision. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Schum, D.A. (2013). Decision Analysis. In: Gass, S.I., Fu, M.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1153-7_215
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1153-7_215
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-1137-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-1153-7
eBook Packages: Business and Economics