Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making

Anderson-Cook, Christine M.

doi:10.1080/08982112.2016.1217120

Title: Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making

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Abstract

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. Inmore »« less

Authors:

Anderson-Cook, Christine M. ^[1]

Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Publication Date:: Tue Aug 09 00:00:00 EDT 2016

Research Org.:: Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE Office of Defense Programs (DP)

OSTI Identifier:: 1325658

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-16-26615
Journal ID: ISSN 0898-2112

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-06NA25396

Resource Type:: Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:: Quality Engineering

Additional Journal Information:: Journal Name: Quality Engineering; Journal ID: ISSN 0898-2112

Publisher:: American Society for Quality Control

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Subject:: 97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING; 99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS; Mathematics

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                    Anderson-Cook, Christine M. Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making.  United States: N. p., 2016. 
Web.  doi:10.1080/08982112.2016.1217120.

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                    Anderson-Cook, Christine M. Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making.  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1080/08982112.2016.1217120

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                    Anderson-Cook, Christine M. Tue .  
"Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making".  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1080/08982112.2016.1217120.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1325658.

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@article{osti_1325658,

  title        = {Optimizing in a complex world: A statistician's role in decision making},

  author       = {Anderson-Cook, Christine M.},

  abstractNote = {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.},

  doi          = {10.1080/08982112.2016.1217120},

  journal      = {Quality Engineering},

  number       = ,

  volume       = ,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {Tue Aug 09 00:00:00 EDT 2016},

  month        = {Tue Aug 09 00:00:00 EDT 2016}

}

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