Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Decision Analysis: How certain are you?

Its amazing when one wonders through the library at IIASA. Its like stepping back in time to an age of paper journals and stacks. You even have to fill out paper loan forms. The librarian is so helpful and put together a unique reading list to deal with my topics and methodologies. It is the kind of personal service that makes you want to go back time and again. Imagine UCT library with a personalised service.

My current reading list is full of Decision Analysis and Robust Solutions. The founders of decision analysis were all affiliated to IIASA in some form, Ronald Howard being one of them. Its quite scary to grasp just how far their network of influence goes.

Decision Analysis has been around since the 60's, so why am I reading about it now? Bayesian networks, influence diagrams, decision networks are all founded on this concise technique that captures the most incredible amount of data, both subjective and objective. My pile of papers is growing...

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