Tools For Decision Making

Known for encouraging step-by-step problem solving and for connecting techniques to real-world scenarios, David Ammons’ Tools for Decision Making covers a wide range of local government practices—from the foundational to the advanced. Brief and readable, each chapter opens with a problem in a hypothetical city and then introduces a tool to address it. Thoroughly updated with new local government examples, the second edition also incorporates chapters devoted to such additional techniques as sampling analysis, sensitivity analysis, financial condition analysis, and forecasting via trend analysis. Numerous tables, figures, exhibits, equations, and worksheets walk readers through the application of tools, and boxed features throughout each chapter present other uses for techniques, helpful online resources, and common errors. A handy guide for students and an invaluable resource and reference for practitioners.

Through a blend of compelling exercises, illustrations, and stories, the bestselling author of Thinking in Bets will train you to combat your own biases, address your weaknesses, and help you become a better and more confident decision-maker. What do you do when you're faced with a big decision? If you're like most people, you probably make a pro and con list, spend a lot of time obsessing about decisions that didn't work out, get caught in analysis paralysis, endlessly seek other people's opinions to find just that little bit of extra information that might make you sure, and finally go with your gut. What if there was a better way to make quality decisions so you can think clearly, feel more confident, second-guess yourself less, and ultimately be more decisive and be more productive? Making good decisions doesn't have to be a series of endless guesswork. Rather, it's a teachable skill that anyone can sharpen. In How to Decide, bestselling author Annie Duke and former professional poker player lays out a series of tools anyone can use to make better decisions. You'll learn: • To identify and dismantle hidden biases. • To extract the highest quality feedback from those whose advice you seek. • To more accurately identify the influence of luck in the outcome of your decisions. • When to decide fast, when to decide slow, and when to decide in advance. • To make decisions that more effectively help you to realize your goals and live your values. Through interactive exercises and engaging thought experiments, this book helps you analyze key decisions you've made in the past and troubleshoot those you're making in the future. Whether you're picking investments, evaluating a job offer, or trying to figure out your romantic life, How to Decide is the key to happier outcomes and fewer regrets.

This book is unique in identifying and presenting tools to environmental decision-makers to help them improve the quality and clarity of their work. These tools range from software to policy approaches, and from environmental databases to focus groups. Equally of value to environmental managers, and students in environmental risk, policy, economics and law.

The success of any business relies heavily on the evaluation and improvement on current strategies and processes. Such progress can be facilitated by implementing more effective decision-making systems. Tools and Techniques for Economic Decision Analysis provides a thorough overview of decision models and methodologies in the context of business economics. Highlighting a variety of relevant issues on finance, economic policy, and firms and networks, this book is an ideal reference source for managers, professionals, students, and academics interested in emerging developments for decision analysis.

With the new federal law, No Child Left Behind, there is ever increasing pressure on schools to be accountable for improving student achievement. That pressure is taking the form of focused efforts around data-driven decision making. However, very little is known about what data-driven decision making can really tell one about improving achievement nor is there a full explanation available about what it really takes to do this work. The few examples that do exist, while proposing to get at some of these issues, make huge assumptions about educators' knowledge base and available resources necessary for success. In this book, Philip Streifer fills the gaps by laying out how this work can be done and then explains what is knowable when one actually conducts these analyses and what follow-up steps are needed to make true improvements. He provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of what data-driven decision making can and cannot tell educators about student achievement and addresses the related issues for leadership, policy development, and accountability. Senior level district administration for policy development, school level administrators who have to put policy into practice, and graduate college professors teaching data-driven decision making will find this book most useful.

"This book provides the latest research studies, market analysis, and best practices utilized in emerging markets to gain competitive advantage and market leadership"--Provided by publisher.

An important activity for an organization’s leaders and managers is making decisions associated with problem-solving. Making decisions is a complex endeavor where choices are made from courses of action where resources are limited and in the presence of constraints. Written as a guide, this book offers a quantitative approach to decision-making. The process of decision-making is presented from a holistic point of view. This book offers a basic understanding of the issues and processes involved in decision-making by presenting the tools associated with problem analysis, tools that enable developing choices, as well as tools used to normalize judgment criteria achievement so that they are comparable across measures using different scales. Several solution methods for decision problems that have one evaluation criterion are explained first. Methods for problems with multiple criteria for evaluating alternate solutions are discussed as well. The multiple criteria methods include those that do not require any explicit preference or trade-off information from the decision-maker and those that do require the decision-maker’s preference or trade-off information. The intended audience of the book includes technical and nontechnical professionals, managers, and supervisors at all levels, and engineering and business educators. The book would also be useful to undergraduate students, beginning graduate students, and recent graduates of professional programs, or in mathematics, computer science, natural sciences, and humanities.

-Identify your critical decisions. Focus on those that matter most to your company's performance. --

Many companies are not single businesses but a collection of businesses with one or more levels of corporate management. Written for managers, advisors and students aspiring to these roles, this book is a guide to decision-making in the domain of corporate strategy. It arms readers with research-based tools needed to make good corporate strategy decisions and to assess the soundness of the corporate strategy decisions of others. Readers will learn how to do the analysis for answering questions such as 'Should we pursue an alliance or an acquisition to grow?', 'How much should we integrate this acquisition?' and 'Should we divest this business?'. The book draws on the authors' wealth of research and teaching experience at INSEAD, London Business School and University College London. A range of learning aids, including easy-to-comprehend examples, decision templates and FAQs, are provided in the book and on a rich companion website.