Prioritization Techniques Based on Stochastic Paired Comparisons

Abstract

In 1977, Thomas L. Saaty introduced a method of assigning weights to categories based on data on paired comparisons. If we let α _{i j} denote the relative importance of the object being classified into the i ^th category, as opposed to the j ^th category, then it is assumed that a _ij = 1/a _ji . The normalized eigenvector associated with the largest eigenvalue of this reciprocal matrix is suggested as the vector of weights associated with the categories. In this paper, we extend this technique when the data is based on stochastic paired comparisons.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is operated by Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc. under Contract DE-AC-84OR21400 with the U.S. Department of Energy.