As an added note, we teach decision and risk analysis in our systems engineering and operations research programs at George Mason University. The majority of our students are working professionals, and many of them apply the techniques in their professional lives. I'm not aware of everything they do at work, but sometimes they choose work-related topics for class projects. As just one example, a few years ago a student who worked for a company that makes people-movers for airports developed a decision support system that elicited information to construct a multi-attribute utility function, and provided recommendations for which kind of people-mover system an airport should install. I believe the system was used by her company. Among those who have studied decision analysis, it's pretty widely used. I know many people who say that although they rarely perform a full-blown quantitative decision analysis, they find the approach to problem structuring quite useful. In other words, their qualititative heuristics for making decisions follow a decision-analytic approach.
Kathryn Laskey At 3:57 PM -0400 4/14/06, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote: >Please also see the web site of Innovative Decisions, Inc. > >On that web site, you can find a long list of publications that >includes numerous journal and conference papers, book chapters, and >books. Many of the principals at Innovative Decisions have been >doing decision analysis since the 70's, and some of the publications >on the list date back to that time, while others were published >within the past few months or are in press. > >The web site also advertises a chapter on risk management in the >recently published Homeland Security Handbook. > >Kathryn Laskey > > >At 7:24 PM -0700 3/31/06, Kevin Van Horn wrote: >>The fact that Lumina Decision Systems (lumina.com), Decisioneering >>(decisioneering.com), Palisade (www.palisade.com), TreeAge Software >>(www.treeage.com), and other companies selling decision analysis >>software are still in business, and have been for many years, is >>pretty good evidence that corporate America does use decision >>analysis. You can probably find some case studies on their websites. >> >>On Mar 29, 2006, at 7:31 AM, Rich wrote: >> >>> After describing decision analysis to my class recently, a student >>> actually applied it on his job. A question then came up. Where has it >>> been successfully applied in real life problems? Although it's been >>> around my whole life (at least since Jimmy Savage's book in 1954), I >>> actually am aware of few real applications. There are a lot of >>> publications that discuss problems that look real (e.g. Clemen's >>> book), but is any of this real? Did Penzoil really analyze the >>> problem as Clemen describes? Of course sitting in my `ivory tower' I >>> would not know what goes on in corporate America, etc. So I would be >>> curious to learn of any real applications of decision analysis, >>> especially ones that are published. This could be in an expert system >>> (that people use) or to make a one time decision. >>> Thanks, >>> Rich >>> >>> Richard E. Neapolitan >>> Professor and Chair of Computer Science >>> Northeastern Illinois University >>> 5500 N. St. Louis >>> Chicago, Illinois 60625 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> uai mailing list >>> uai@ENGR.ORST.EDU >>> https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/uai >> >>_______________________________________________ >>uai mailing list >>uai@ENGR.ORST.EDU >>https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/uai > >_______________________________________________ >uai mailing list >uai@ENGR.ORST.EDU >https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/uai _______________________________________________ uai mailing list uai@ENGR.ORST.EDU https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/uai
