The assistant professor of the Faculty of Informatics of the University of Debrecen developed a method to help improve the efficiency of decision support algorithms. The scientific work of Anett Rácz was recognized with a Publication Award by the board of trustees of the Gróf Tisza István Foundation for the University of Debrecen.
This year, for the first time, the publication award of the sustaining foundation was presented to those university professionals who published research results on renowned international platforms that contributed to improving the academic reputation of the institution. Among the awardees was Anett Rácz, assistant professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Probability Computing at the University of Debrecen’s Faculty of Informatics, for the publication of her scientific work on reducing the inconsistency of mixed-integer fractional-linear model and its linear analogue. The study describing the research was published in the journal Information Sciences.
The researcher of the Faculty of Informatics has developed an algorithm that helps to decipher the anomalies behind inconsistent or less effective decision evaluations.
During decision-making processes, there are many methods for choosing between alternatives, i.e. choices. From the point of view of the decision-maker, one of the most convenient and effective procedures is to deal with only one pair of elements at a time and to compare these two options with each other, instead of trying to evaluate the whole set under one hat. This method is called paired comparison. The method ranks the alternatives by comparing the pairs using mathematical methods, but the ranking is made difficult by a certain degree of inconsistency, inattention, and inaccuracy of data recording on the part of the decision maker. I was involved in the development of methods for discovering and improving them
– the university assistant professor explained the interest.
The goal was for the developed method to propose comparison values that are close to the opinion expressed by the decision-maker, but at the same time less inconsistent, thereby making the rest of the decision-making process significantly more accurate.
Anett Rácz said that a doctoral dissertation a few years earlier inspired her to start research, she has been dealing with decision theory for a long time. He added that his research results will be widely used, for example in the development of software used for decision support, in the creation of algorithms, in industrial decision-making, in medicine and psychology, since decision theory receives special attention in these areas.
Anywhere where a decision has to be made, the method can be used, the task of which is to help in the formation of consistent evaluations and opinions during the decision-making process. In these cases, the possibility of making mistakes is abundant. In such cases, the question arises as to how consistent we can be at the moment when some disturbing factor affects us. Our goal is to help the decision-maker’s work, to present immediate suggestions instead of critical alternative comparisons, which will be used to find the ranking values that best reflect the decision
-added Anett Rácz.
(unideb.hu)
