Decision making  method  in Mathematics

In various situations in life, we have to choose between different alternatives, where the choices themselves are full of uncertainity. Right from infancy , choosing which school to go , at the secondary stage choosing which stream to opt for which career or profession to choose, Which party or candidate to vote for in an election, in which company to invest financially, whether to invest in shares or mutual funds, and so on, there are so many examples where one has to decides without having precise or complete continuous stream of decisions and usually these are tackled on the basis of previous experience, intuition and subjectivity. This blog introduced decision analysis, which takes a rational look at decision making and develops methods for improving decisions in a variety of circumstances. The first difficulty of decision makings the complexity of situations in which decisions have to be made. To overcome this problem decision making in a number of situations will be considered with decision making under uncertainty. There is only one event and the solution procedure is to list the consequences  and select the one  with the best value. Decision making under uncertainty has a  number of possible events, but there is no way of saying which are more likely. The decision criteria  will be used. Decision making under risks allows probabilities  to be assigned  to events and expected values  or expected utilities will be used. Finally, series of sequential  decisions are considered, emphasizing the use of decision trees.

In order to introduced a systematic  approach  to decision making, some techniques that are often used  are payoff tables, opportunity loss , use of posters or probabilities and decision trees. According to the functional cycles of managements, the managerial activities  as a whole is include s five phases or life processes which are planning, organizations, directions, supervision  and control. In performing all of these activities, the management has to face several such situations where they have to make a choice of the best among  a number of alternative courses  of actions. This choice making is technically termed as  decision making, or decision taking. Decision is simply a selection from two or more courses of action. Decision making permeates all management activities . It is essential  for setting objectives, deciding basic corporate policies, preparing future profits and asset requirements of the enterprise.  It also involves determining the future type of organizational structure ascertaining how to motivate personnel’s and accepting innovations , Hence we can define the decision theory as follows.

“A process which results  in the selection from a set of alternative courses of action, that course of action  which is considered to meet the objectives of the decision problem more satisfactory then others as judged by the decision maker.” Or in other words “ The process of logical and quantitative analysis  of all factors  that influences the decision problem, assist the decision maker  in analyzing these problems  with several course of action  and consequences.” Therefore one can use this techniques  to make a decision in a  situation of fuzziness in life problems.

Dr. Hakimuddin Khan 

Associate Professor

 Department of Information Technology