Formal Mathematical Description
Each decision in a set of available decision options will lead to an outcome . All possible outcomes form the set . Assigning a utility to every outcome, we can define the utility of a particular decision as
We can then define an optimal decision as one that maximizes :
Solving the problem can thus be divided into three steps:
- predicting the outcome for every decision
- assigning a utility to every outcome
- finding the decision that maximizes
Read more about this topic: Optimal Decision
Famous quotes containing the words formal, mathematical and/or description:
“Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily.
Let not our looks put on our purposes,
But bear it as our Roman actors do,
With untired spirits and formal constancy.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.”
—Blaise Pascal (16231662)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)