Controversy
Decision researchers studying how individuals research decisions have found that decision analysis is rarely used. High-stakes decisions, made under time pressure, are not well described by decision analysis. Some decision analysts, in turn, argue that their approach is prescriptive, providing a prescription of what actions to take based on sound logic, rather than a descriptive approach, describing the flaws in the way people do make decisions. Critics cite the phenomenon of paralysis by analysis as one possible consequence of over-reliance on decision analysis in organizations.
Studies have demonstrated the utility of decision analysis in creating decision-making algorithms that are superior to "unaided intuition".
The term "decision analytic" has often been reserved for decisions that do not appear to lend themselves to mathematical optimization methods. Methods like applied information economics, however, attempt to apply more rigorous quantitative methods even to these types of decisions.
Read more about this topic: Decision Analysis
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
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—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)