Abstract
Not to be confused with an expert system generator, this is one of the multi-criterion decision-making packages reviewed by Benjamin Radcliff in Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 1986) of this journal. Such packages allow decision makers to apply quantitative or subjective rankings to multiple alternatives by ranking them against multiple criteria. For example, a public project could be ranked by cost, environmental impact, affirmative action impact, and other criteria. Criteria are weighted by the program's leading the user through a set of simple verbal comparisons. Alternatives are ranked against each other by each of the weighted criteria, a task which the user accomplishes by adjusting the lengths of histogram-like bars. Not well documented and requiring a significant investment of learning time, this is nonetheless an effective package based on scholarly work by Thomas L. Saaty on analytic hierarchical processes.1
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