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I will assume you have at least some familiarity with decision analytic models and will not take the time to explain them.
This oversimplified decision model will serve as an example for my talk and show you the context for my contribution.
It poses the decision between chemotherapy and surgery for a patient with a benign tumor on the otic nerve essential for hearing.
The highlighted blocks represent the interposed system of multiple attributes I propose to capture and use in a refined determination of utility values shown here on the right. The composition of the multiple attributes to be used is determined on an individual basis.The hypothetical surgeons favor the surgery and rightly so according to the model which when “rolled back” as the analysts call it, computation reveals that surgery strategy outweighs the chemotherapy strategy.
However, if the utility value of the loss of balance is actually anything less than 0.5 then the model says chemotherapy is the favored strategy. I know a tree surgeon who faced such a decision, whose livelihood depended upon his literally going out on a limb and not falling out of trees.