[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

The next step was to verify the additive independence assumptions. It was done
through assessment of the attributes under each fundamental objective in order to define
the form of the utility function (see section 3.7). The assessment procedure was
conducted following the methodology proposed by Keeney and Raiffa. 107
Since the additive independence implies utility independence, the assessment
started verifying the former. If additive independence did not hold, then utility
independence was assessed.
As an example, the procedure used to assess the independence conditions between
the attributes A3.3 Range (y) and A3.4 Payload Weight (z) will be described. The
attributes Y and Z are additive independent if and only if the lotteries in figure 27 are
indifferent for all amounts of y, z given a specific y‘, z‘.
In this example: y = 5, y‘= 0, z = 250, z‘=0
0.5 (5, 250)
0.5
L1 ≡ and L2 ≡
0.5 (0, 0)
0.5
Figure 27. Additive Independence Assessment.
Practically speaking, for any of the pairs taken from figure 26, the DM should be
indifferent between lotteries L1 and L2 for additive independence to hold. In this specific
107 Keeney and Raiffa, Decisions with Multiple Objectives.
60
(0, 250)
(5, 0)