We at the center cannot meet your needs without input. Listed below are the professional services that we provide. Please choose by circling yes or no, service that address your immediate areas of concern.

FINANCIAL ADVISOR YES NO

FAMILY PHYSICIAN YES NO

SOCIAL PHYSIOLOGIST YES NO

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER YES NO

POLITICAL SCIENTIST YES NO

After completing the form, please return it to your advisor. A decision support system will be designed and tailored to your particular problem by a systems engineer using the input of the professionals you have selected.

Aunt Sara DSS

Abstract

Using AHP and Microsoft Excel we have developed a DSS for the case of Aunt Sara. The model revolves around Jim and Connie’s visit to a family planning center where they are interviewed by a physician, a social psychologist, a political scientist, and a systems engineer. Connie and Jim discuss Aunt Sara from the perspective of economics, health, social psychology and political science with these experts. During the course of these interviews Connie and Jim reveal their concerns and objectives to the planning center experts. The concerns and objectives are used to form the pairwise comparisons for the AHP matrix.

Objectives: 1.) Preserve the Family Lifestyle.

2.) Aunt Sara’s piece of mind.

3.) Family Finical Statistics.

4.) Happiness of the Children.

Choices: 1.) Accept Sara to move in.

2.) Reject Aunt Sara.

3.) Sara moves in for a short time.

4.) Sarah moves into a senior center

5.) Find a live-in companion.

6.) Hire a professional caretaker.

This is the pairwise matrix comparison for the Aunt Sara DSS. It contains the weights arrived at by the experts from the family planning center.

The DSS consists of a Connie input form, a Jim input form, the professionals input form, and a results and ranking table.

The Connie input form is dynamic and any changes in the choices or objectives are reflected to the Jim input form, professional input form, and the results table. This allows the model to be changed for any AHP application providing there are six choices and four objectives.

Below is the input table used by Connie and Jim to weigh their comparisons. The table uses a -9, -7,-5,-3,1,3,5,7,9 scale from left to right. AHP experts should not be alarmed, we are not using negative numbers in AHP calculations. The format we used represents raw data which we convert to the normalized AHP matrix. The programming was greatly facilitated by representing the reciprocals as a whole negative number and then converting them to fractions for AHP calculations. Alway use the delete key only, when changing an input value in all tables in the spreadsheet

The left side of the table represents the rows in the AHP matrix and the right side of the table represents the columns of the Sarah 4 x 4 matrix. A return of a negative number indicates that the row is less important than the column, and a return of a positive number indicates that the row is more important than the column. For example -9 to the right of "preserve the family lifestyle" reads that Aunt Sara’s "peace of mind" (row) is less important than "preserve the family lifestyle" (column). This -9 is converted to 1/9 for AHP calculations in the Jim input table presented next.

The formula for the table results is as follows:

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It reads, if the result of the cell is not equal to null it is equal to the magnitude of "X" or zero. It returns the value of any cell in the row marked with an "X". Only one "X" can be used in any row. The problem of a zero value occurring between the two tables which can happen if Connie inputs a positive value in the same row column choice that Jim chooses as negative has been accounted for. For example: If Connie felt that Aunt Sarah’s peace of mind was definitely more important than Preserving the Family lifestyle (-9) and Jim felt that preserving the Family Lifestyle was definitely more important than Aunt Sarah’s Peace of Mind (9)the Average would be 0/2 = 0. In this case the formula will return a 1.

In addition the Jim input form calculates the pairwise comparison matrix from the raw data and then the normalized matrix and the weights(wMax) w1,w2,w3, and w4.

The results page displays the choices and ranks them. The consistency index is also calculated for the results and displayed. The results page displays the consistency for the professional evaluations. The consistency indexes are dynamic and will reflect all changes made in any matrix on any form. There is a flag included next to the consistancy index results indicating is the consistancy is acceptable or not.

Jim, Connie, or anyone can now use this AHP system to decide what to do with Aunt Sarah or adapt it to other personal or professional situations.