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April 21, 2009: the assignment and exam results are available.
Errors and remarks:
Slide 395 ('Making a decision'): both occurences of s_{ij} should be replace
by s_{ji}, since we take the first index to indicate the row and the second to
indicate the column of the matrix.
Exercise 6.3: 'status quo' does not have a special meaning in the context of decision
problems, so it just means 'the current situation, nothing changes';
Exercise 6.4: the answers to part c) are incorrect. You can use one of three approaches
to solving this exercise, each will result in slightly different risk premiums. 1) Draw a
curve through the given points and read all necessary information from your drawing. 2) Observe
that the function u(x) = sqrt(x)/1000 fits the points; you should then find
risk premiums of 7996 and 113594. 3) Use linear interpolations between the
points and you will find riskpremiums of 0 and 115.000.
General:
Check this page regularly, for the overview of
subjects may be updated regularly.
Acquiring knowledge and understanding of different models and decision analysis techniques for (rational) decision making with and without uncertainty. Roughly, the following subjects will be discussed:
This course is given in Period 3: weeks 6 - 15 (2009); the final exam is in week 16.
Lectures are given twice a week. For further details, see the official schedule.
Lecturer:
dr. Silja Renooij
(e-mail)
The following table gives an overview of the subjects treated each class. The corresponding slides can be downloaded. In addition, exercises to practice with the material are listed. Note that more in-depth understanding will be required for passing this course than necessary for the exercises.
The exercises can be found in the studymanual,
which also lists the relevant chapters of the textbook (see below).
| Week | Date | Subjects | Slides | Relevant exercises |
| 6 | 04-02 | Introduction | Slides 1 | 1.1,1.2 |
| | 06-02 | Decision criteria; Decision trees |
" | 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.2ab, 3.3ab, 3.4, 3.5 |
| 7 | 11-02 | Probabilities | Slides 2 | 3.2c, 3.3c, 3.4ef, 4.1, 4.2 4.3 |
| 13-02 | Lotteries | " | 4.4, 5.1a, 5.4 | |
| 8 | 18-02 | Utilities | " | 5.1b, 5.2, 5.3, 5.5, 5.6 |
| 20-02 | Risk attitudes | " | 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.6 | |
| 9 | 25-02 | Multi-attribute utility theory | Slides 3 | 6.5, 7.2, 7.16 |
| 27-02 | MAUT cont'd | " | 7.1, 7.3, 7.7, 7.8 | |
| 10 DEADLINE! |
04-03 | MAUT cont'd | " | 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, |
| 06-03 | MAUT cont'd | Slides 4 | 7.9, 7.17 | |
| 11 | 11-03 | MAUT in practice | " | 7.10 -- 7.15 |
| 13-03 | MAUT in practice cont'd | " | ||
| 12 | No classes (re-examinations) | |||
| 13 | 25-03 | Sensitivity analysis | Slides 5 | 8.1, 8.2 |
| 27-03 | Sensitivity analysis cont'd | " | 8.3, 8.7a-c | |
| 14 | 01-04 | Value of information analysis | " | 8.4, 8.5, 8.6, 8.7de |
| 03-04 | Analytic Hierarchy process | " | 9.1 -- 9.7 | |
| 15 DEADLINE! |
No lectures: Study week | |||
| 16 | Exam |
The course will be graded based on a practical assignment and a written exam.
FG = Mark(1/3 AG + 2/3 EG),
where Mark(x) =
To qualify for the 2nd chance exam in week 23, you should have received
at least a 5.0 for the practical assignment in this year. Under
certain
conditions, you may be granted a second chance for the practical
assignment. It is not possible to redo both the written exam and the
practical assignment! See the following table for details:
| Re-examination conditions for the written exam : |
Re-examination conditions for the practical assignment : |
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Partial results from previous years are no longer valid. Reports on practical assignments done in previous years may be re-submitted, but are not guaranteed to receive the same grade due to changes in criteria.
The final written exam is a closed book exam. You are strongly
advised to bring a calculator (mobile phones are not allowed!)
Here's a list of what I expect you to know and understand for the exam. Here's an example of a written exam. Note that this exam stems from the time when participants could consult the book, notes, and transparencies during the exam; this is no longer allowed!
The practical assignment consists of
performing a decision analysis and writing a report about it. The
assignment may be done either alone or, preferably, in pairs. View the grading criteria based on which your
report will be marked.
Deadlines:
Robert T. Clemen, Terence Reilly (2004)The 2001 edition of this book can also be used (ISBN 0534365973);
Making Hard Decisions -- With DecisionTools
Duxbury Press. ISBN 0495015083
Slides: (see overview) the slides are considered essential supplementary material. A few topics discussed in the course are not covered by the book; in addition, a number of topics are covered in more detail than provided by the book. All relevant information can be found on the slides.
Studymanual: (download here) the
studymanual gives an overview of reading material per subject treated,
and contains most exercises, including some answers.
Further reading:
for
those seeking additional material the following is recommended:
R.L. Keeney & H. Raiffa, Decisions with Multiple Objectives,
Cambridge University Press, 1993
chapters of interest: Ch 4 (utility theory), 5, 6
(Multi Attribute Utility Theory)
W.L. Winston, Operations Research: Applications an Algorithms,
Duxbury Press, 1994
chapters of interest: Ch 13 (decision criteria), 14
(MAUT, Analytic Hierarchy Process)
J.A. Rice, Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis,
2nd edition, Duxbury Press, 1995
chapters of interest: Ch 15
The Virtual
Laboratories in Probability and Statistics
H.C. Sox, M.A. Blatt, M.C. Higgins, K.I. Marton (1988), Medical Decision Making, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1988.
To enhance understanding of different subjects, we recommend trying out the demo version of, for example, DPL. More information about decision analysis in general and software more in particular can be found on the website of the Decision Analysis Society (DAS).
Our intention is that you find the decision analysis course interesting, motivating, perhaps a bit difficult now and again but doable, challenging and enjoyable, and last but not least, we hope that you feel that you have learnt many useful things. If for some reason the course wasn't what you'd expected and/or if you have any (reasonable) suggestions to improve the course and everything that comes with it, please fill out the evaluation form. If you're completely satisfied then we'd also like to know that and filling out the evaluation form would be a way of telling me this.
For those who are interested, links are provided to the evaluation of previous years. Note that this can be viewed internally only. For each evaluation, you'll find listed the number of registrants (union of OSIRIS subscribers and participants), the number of participants (distinct students that participated in an examination in that year), and the number of respondents (students that filled out the evaluation form).
Please note that the evaluation site contains links to evaluations of a 'Besliskunde' course in years previous to 2002-2003. This is a different course from the current one as it was a third year course, entirely focussed on medical decision making; evaluations are therefore incomparable.