PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 7 Beyond ranking: exploring relative preferences in P/RRA

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 7 Beyond ranking: exploring relative preferences in P/RRA Simon Maxwell and Claude Bart Introduction For example, people may want different trees for different purposes and prefer a mix rather than a single species. Sometimes, however, it In this paper we argue in favour of moving may be useful to establish an overall beyond simple preference ranking when exploring preferences in PRA or RRA. The preference ranking, for example if alternatives main reason for this is that ranking actually are mutually exclusive. tells us little about preferences. This is often less than we think, because so many of us A seemingly obvious way of generating misinterpret ranking data. But even when overall preference is to add up the ranking scores in the table. In Table 1 for example, interpreted correctly, ranking is not enough. Eucalyptus would score five, Grevillea 12, and Scoring systems are better, and some are so on. Unfortunately this simple solution is described here, but we shall also introduce two new techniques which help to provide better impermissible. First of all, it assumes that each information about preferences. of the criteria has the same weight, so that `speed of growth' is just ...