hSNS publication in the European Journal of Operational Research

Pairwise Comparison Tables within the Deck of Cards Method in Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding

Authors: Salvatore Corrente; José Rui Figueira; Salvatore Greco

Abstract:  This paper deals with an improved version of the deck of cards method to render the construction of ratio and interval scales more “accurate” compared to the ones built in the original version. The improvement comes from the fact that we can account for a richer and finer preference information provided by the decision-maker, which permits a more accurate modeling of the strength of preference between different levels of a scale. Instead of considering only the number of blank cards between consecutive positions in the ranking of objects, such as criteria and scale levels, we consider also the number of blank cards between not consecutive positions in the ranking. This information is collected in a pairwise comparison table that is not necessarily built with precise values. We can consider imprecise information provided in the form of intervals and missing values. Since the provided information is not necessarily consistent, we propose also some procedures to help the decision-maker to make consistent her evaluations in a co-constructive way interacting with an analyst and reflecting and revising her judgments. A didactic example will illustrate the application of the method.

Keywords:  Multiple Criteria Analysis, Deck of cards method, Decision aiding, Robust information, Pairwise comparison tables.

[Bibliographic reference] Corrente, S.; Figueira, J.; Greco, S. (2020) Pairwise Comparison Tables within the Deck of Cards Method in Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding. European Journal of Operational Research. [in press]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2020.09.036

About the journal: The European Journal of Operational Research (EJOR) publishes high quality, original papers that contribute to the methodology of operational research (OR) and to the practice of decision making. EJOR contains the following types of papers:

• Invited Reviews, explaining to the general OR audience the developments in an OR topic over the recent years;
• Innovative Applications of OR, describing novel ways to solve real problems;
• Theory and Methodology Papers, presenting original research results contributing to the methodology of OR and to its theoretical foundations;
• Short Communications, if they correct important deficiencies of papers previously published in EJOR.