An improved method for solving multiple criteria problems involving discrete alternatives

Abstract

An approach is presented for solving a discrete-multiple-criteria problem. The approach asks pairwise comparisons of a decision-maker. Under mild assumptions, the method obtains the most preferred alternative. The required number of pairwise comparisons is generally modest. The authors' experience with the method indicates that for reasonable underlying utility functions, a heuristic stopping rule generally yields the most preferred alternative after several comparisons, usually fewer than 20.