Analytical hierarchy

Okay, imagine you’re trying to decide what to have for dinner. Your tummy is rumbling and you’ve got lots of options. You could have pizza, spaghetti, or a chicken burger. But how do you decide which one to pick?

Well, one way to make a decision is to use what’s called an analytical hierarchy. Don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it sounds.

An analytical hierarchy is basically a way of breaking down a big decision into smaller, more manageable pieces. So, let’s say you want to use an analytical hierarchy to decide what to have for dinner.

First, you might make a list of all the things that are important to you when it comes to food. Maybe you care about taste, healthiness, and convenience.

Next, you’d rank those things in order of importance. Maybe taste is the most important thing to you, followed by healthiness, and then convenience.

Now it’s time to start comparing your dinner options. Let’s say you’re considering pizza and spaghetti. You’d look at their taste, healthiness, and convenience and decide which one is better for each category.

For example, you might decide that pizza is tastier than spaghetti but not as healthy. Spaghetti is healthier but requires more effort to cook. So, you’d give pizza a higher ranking for taste and spaghetti a higher ranking for healthiness.

Once you’ve ranked each option for each category, you add up the scores and see which one comes out on top overall. And there you go, you’ve used an analytical hierarchy to decide what to have for dinner. Sounds easy, right?