The Art and Science of Decision-Making

This book refers to the Multi Criteria Decision-Making, a process, half art and half science that facilitates the Decision-Maker work. Why and art? Because given a set of alternatives or projects the Decision-Maker needs to apply his/her knowledge, expertise and common sense to select a set of projects and for determining on what basis these projects will be evaluated. There are no equal projects; each one, even for the same purpose has its own characteristics than more often than not cannot be analyzed through mathematical formulas. Thus Decision-Maker involvement is paramount. Decision-Making is also science, because with the information inputted a model must be able to suggest results that satisfy the Decision-Making or a Group Decision-Making. This book tries to combine both aspects by presenting a efficient model -the SIMUS method - that can support and especially justify the Decision-Maker decisions. The book covers the full procedure from arranging the initial data in a convenient way, to delivering results for the Decision-Maker examination. A particular feature is that the method yields two coincident results as a consequence of using two completely different procedures