Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
As applied statisticians increasingly participate as active members of problem-solving and decision-making teams, our role continues to evolve. Historically, we may have been seen as those who can help with data collection strategies or answer a specific question from a set of data. Nowadays, we are or strive to be more deeply involved throughout the entire problem-solving process. An emerging role is to provide a set of leading choices from which subject matter experts and managers can choose to make informed decisions. A key to success is to provide vehicles for understanding the trade-offs between candidates and interpreting the merits of each choice in the context of the decision-makers priorities. To achieve this objective, it is helpful to be able (a) to help subject matter experts identify quantitative criteria that match their priorities, (b) eliminate non-competitive choices through the use of a Pareto front, and (c) provide summary tools from which the trade-offs between alternatives can be quantitatively evaluated and discussed. A structured but flexible process for contributing to team decisions is described for situations when all choices can easily be enumerated as well as when a search algorithm to explore a vast number of potential candidates is required. In conclusion, a collection of diverse examples ranging from model selection, through multiple response optimization, and designing an experiment illustrate the approach.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Defense Programs (DP)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1325658
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-16-26615
- Journal Information:
- Quality Engineering, Journal Name: Quality Engineering; ISSN 0898-2112
- Publisher:
- American Society for Quality ControlCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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