Alexis Tsoukias

Denis Bouyssou

Thierry Marchant

Marc Pirlot

Philippe Vincke

Formal decision and evaluation models are so widespread that almost no one can pretend not to have used or suffered the consequences of one of them. This book is a guide aimed at helping the analyst to choose a model and use it consistently. A sound analysis of techniques is proposed and the presentation can be extended to most decision and evaluation models as a "decision aiding methodology".

Stepping stones for the analyst

Evaluation and Decision Models with Multiple Criteria

Patrice Perny

P. Vincke

1. 1 Motivations Deciding is a very complex and difficult task. Some people even argue that our ability to make decisions in complex situations is the main feature that distinguishes us from animals (it is also common to say that laughing is the main difference). Nevertheless, when the task is too complex or the interests at stake are too important, it quite often happens that we do not know or we are not sure what to decide and, in many instances, we resort to a decision support technique: an informal one-we toss a coin, we ask an oracle, we visit an astrologer, we consult an expert, we think-or a formal one. Although informal decision support techniques can be of interest, in this book, we will focus on formal ones. Among the latter, we find some well-known decision support techniques: cost-benefit analysis, multiple criteria decision analysis, decision trees, . . . But there are many other ones, sometimes not presented as decision support techniques, that help making decisions. Let us cite but a few examples. • When the director of a school must decide whether a given student will pass or fail, he usually asks each teacher to assess the merits of the student by means of a grade. The director then sums the grades and compares the result to a threshold. • When a bank must decide whether a given client will obtain a credit or not, a technique, called credit scoring, is often used.

A Critical Perspective

Evaluation and Decision Models

Francesca Rossi

Algorithmic decision theory is a new interdisciplinary research area that aims to bring together researchers from di?erent ?elds such as decision theory, d- crete mathematics, theoretical computer science and arti?cial intelligence, in order to improve decision support in the presence of massive databases, com- natorial structures, partial and/or uncertain information and distributed, p- sibly interoperating, decision makers. Such problems arise in several real-world decision-making scenarios such as humanitarian logistics, epidemiology, risk assessment and management, e-government, electronic commerce, and rec- mender systems. In 2007, the EU-funded COST Action IC0602 on Algorithmic Decision T- ory was started, networking a number of researchers and research laboratories around Europe (and beyond). The COST Action IC0602 now gathers over 100 participants from more than 30 countries (including non-COST countries such as Australia, South Africa and the USA). For more details see www.algodec.org. Within the Action, and in cooperation with the EURO Working Group on Pr- erences,itwasdecidedtostartanewseriesofconferencesonalgorithmicdecision theory, the goal being to provide a forum for researchers interested in this area. This volume contains the papers presented at ADT 2009, the ?rst Inter- tional Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory. The conference was held in SanServolo,a smallislandintheVenetianLagoon,onOctober20–23,2009.The programoftheconferenceincludedoralpresentations,posters,invitedtalks,and tutorials (for more information see www.adt2009.org).

First International Conference, ADT 2009, Venice, Italy, October 2009, Proceedings

Algorithmic Decision Theory

This volume contains the papers presented at ADT 2009, the first International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory. The conference was held in San Servolo, a small island of the Venice lagoon, during October 20-23, 2009. The program of the conference included oral presentations, posters, invited talks, and tutorials. The conference received 65 submissions of which 39 papers were accepted (9 papers were posters). The topics of these papers range from computational social choice preference modeling, from uncertainty to preference learning, from multi-criteria decision making to game theory.

Fred S. Roberts

RONEN BRAFMAN

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory, ADT 2011, held in Piscataway, NJ, USA, in October 2011. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 50 submissions.

Alexis Tsoukias

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