Info Systems Final Exam

Cleaning Data in Excel (Cont'd)

-Covert cells that contain non-atomic data to multiple column (For example, a cell in a skills column that contains multiple skill values, such as C# programming, VBA programming, web design should be broken out to separate columns so that each cell contains only on skill value -Use the TRIM command to remove leading, trailing, and multiple embedded spaces -Remove non-printing characters -Find and fix spelling and punctuation errors -Remove duplicate rows or duplicate fields -Ensure that columns of data do no contain mixed formats (Numbers must not be formatted as text, Dates must not be formatted as numbers)

From a societal point of view, there are many aspects to Information Privacy like

-Crime concerns -Security/Safety concerns -Personal confidentiality concerns -Protecting certain parties like children -Guarding societal freedoms -Protecting a nation from war or terrorism -Risk of monetary gain at the expense of others

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)

-Data processing in which each transactions is processed immediately -At any time, the data in an online system reflects the current status -Many organizations find that OLTP enables them to provide faster, more effective source

Quantitative Data

-Data that is a numerical,counted, or compared on a scale (Demographic data, answers to close-ended surveys items, attendance data, scores on standardized instruments) -Narratives, logs, experience (Focus groups, interviews, open-ended survey items, diaries and journals, notes from observations)

BI and BA are sued to achieve a number of benefits:

-Detect fraud -Improve forecasting -Increase sales -Optimize operations -Reduce costs

Operational Control (More Structured Decisions)

-Ensuring efficient, effective conducting of tasks -Ensuring processes are well-maintained, followed and tight

Managerial Control (More Semi-Structured Decisions)

-Ensuring efficient, effective use of resources -Detailed plan and enactment of achieving objectives -Continual oversight

Examples of Showing how data mining can be used:

-Examine retail stores data to identify seeming unrelated products that are frequently purchased together -Monitor credit card transactions to identify likely fraudulent requests -Use hotel booking data to adjust room rates so as to maximize revenue -Analyze demographic data and behavior data about potential customers to identify those who would be the most profitable customers to recruit -Recognize how changes in an individual's DNA sequence affect the risk of developing common diseases such as Alzheimer's or cancer

Components Required for Effective BI and Analytics

-Existence of a solid management program, including data governance (Data governance defines the roles, responsibilities, and processes for ensuring that data can be trusted and used by the entire organization) -Creative data scientisits -Management team (must have a strong commitment to data-driven decision making)

Examples of well-defined KPIs:

-For a university. Increase (direction) the five-year graduation rate for incoming freshman (measure) to at least 80 percent (target) starting with the graduating class of 2022 (time frame) -For an HR organization. Reduce (direction) the number of voluntary resignations and terminations for performance (measure) to 6 percent or less (target) for the 2018 fiscal year and subsequent years (time frame)

Business analytics can be used to:

-Gain better understanding of current business performance -Reveal new business patterns/relationships - Explain why certain results occurred -Optimize current operations -Forecast future business results

Continue Creating All Tables

-If a new primary key was added to a table, you must bring in that table in query design view and add joins, in order to add a new table that includes this new primary key field as a join field. Be sure to frag from parent to the child entity to create a temporary join before before performing the new table query -Be sure to start with the parent entities first and work toward making the child entities. If you do not do this, you will not have the foreign key values in place to accurately create the child entities -It is best to plan the order that will create tables looking carefully at you ERD before starting this process

Minimum Cardinality

-If zero, then optional -If one or more, then mandatory

Business Intelligence (BI)

-Includes a wide range of applications, practices, and technologies for the extraction, transformation, integration, visualization, analysis interpretation, and presentation of data to support improved decision making -Data used in BI is often pulled from multiple sources and may come from sources internal and external to the organization (Data can be used to build large collections of data called data warehouses, data marts, and data lakes) -Querying, reporting, OLAPs, alerts can answers questions such as what happened, how many, how often, where the problem is, and what actions are needed

Why Centralization of Power

-Lethal Autonomy refers to the act of a robot committing death attempts on its own -An assumption is that Democracy is preferable to American and/or Terrorist Governments -An assumption is that too much power in an immortal person's hands could bring extensive harm to many people -Left un-regulated, drone attacks open the door to Pausible Deniability, which could encourage rouge attacks that could impact many by a few individuals -Potentially specific people/groups could be easily targeted by a relatively few individuals -Modern societies are more vulnerable to robot attacks because of data dependency

Creating ERD

-Look at the Excel worksheet and identify Entities -Sketch ERD -Be sure that all Excel columns are included as an attribute in an Entity, unless not needed in the database -Be sure that the ERD is normalized to 3NF **Important**: Mark on the ERD all Parent Entities and Child Entities so you know the order in which to create the tables once working in Access. You must create all Parent Entities before their Child Entities

A TPS Provides Valuable Input to:

-Management information systems -Decision support systems -Knowledge management systems -Executive information systems

Dashboards

-Measures are metrics that track progress in executing chosen strategies to attain organizational objectives and goal (These metrics are also called key performance indicators (KPIs) and consists of a direction, measure, target, and time frame -Presents a set of KPIs about the state of a process at specific point of time -Provide rapid access to information in an easy-to-interpret and concise manner -Provide users at every level of the organization the information they need to make improved -Operational dashboards can be designed to draw data in real time from various sources (Including corporate databases and spreadsheets) -Widely used BI software comes from many different vendors, including: Hewlett Packard, IBM, Information Builders, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP

Overall Steps Excel to Access

-Most often when moving data from excel to access you are moving a flat data file to a relational database -An Excel workbook file may not be entirely flat i.e. multiple worksheets of data, but you treat them as separate flat data files or combine them into one worksheet before moving them in Access -The preparation work, that should be done to the Excel workbook before you start the import to Access, is extremely important -You must carefully plan what the final database will look like, by creating an ERD with Entity Attributes that correspond to all needed data columns in the Excel workbook that is in 3NF, prior to completing the port to Access

Add Primary Keys

-Once all tables have been created, go back to table design view and designate the primary keys -The reason this was not done before, is that it can create problems when performing the make table query. The issue is that an auto-number data type is moved in as a secondary attribute -You may have to change the new PK data type to number and after creating the child entity, change the data type back to auto-number. This occurs when you have two foreign keys added to a child entity and access will not allow you to create a table with two auto-number data types. Before changing the datatype to number, copy the table so that you can always go back to this table, if access will not let you change the datatype back to auto-number.

Daniel Suaraz: "The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot"

-Should drones make kill decision? -What type of decision is this-structured, semi-structured, unstructured? -What level of impact is this decision -Is this an all or nothing type of decision -First consider, What is the real problem facing the world with killer robots?

Entity

-Something about which data needs to be kept -Can be a thing or an event -Entities end up as a table in a database -Record, or row, in a table is called an instance of an entity -All the attributes in an entity should be completely determined by the entity instance's primary

Associative Entities

-The database relationship model does not offer direct support to many-to-may relationships, even though such relationships happen frequently in the realm that is being modeled -An associative entity is added to the ERD model to resolve a many-to-many relationship between two entities -An associative entity is also called an Intersection Entity or a Linking Table -An associative entity is a relationship turned into an entity

Business Analytics (BA)

-The extensive use of data and quantitative analysis to support fact-based decision making within organizations -Business analytics (BA) refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning -It is continuous iterative exploration of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning BI + additional level of functionality (forecasting,regression, and modeling) can answer questions like why is this happening, what if these trends continue, what will happen next(predict), what is the best that can happen -It is a set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals

Data Visualization

-The presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format -Representing data in visual form brings immediate impact to dull and boring numbers

ERD-Entity Relationship Diagram

-The process of creating an ERD is call Database Modeling -An ERD does not show how data is converted or processes to information in an Information System -An ERD shows the relationship between the data

Predictive Analytics

-Variety of techniques -Current and historical facts to make predictions about future -Actuarial science, marketing, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, retail, travel, healthcare, pharmaceuticals

Deletion Anomaly

-What if Judy resigns from her job? -What happens to the Sludge Floatation and N2O generation projects?

Insertion Anomaly

-What if new project is negotiated when there is no employee assigned to it yet? -What if new employee joins who is not yet assigned to any project?

The benefits of normalization are:

-a model that better represents the actual business situation -a model with less redundancy in the data -a model which allows easy update of data -a model that allows for accurate query results

Normalization

-a process that enables a database designer to eliminate design problems by decomposing (or reorganizing) the existing table structures -has several levels (first, second, third)

Decision Making Process Phases

1. (Intelligence) Identifying and clearly define the problem Example: -Sales are decreasing and we need to stop the trend -What are the outputs of interest? (Sales) -What is the process that generates the outputs that are observing? (Why are sales decreasing? What effects sales? -What are the inputs/decisions variables that you can change? (Promotions, price, better training of sales staff etc.) 2. (Intelligence) Determine requirements and goals (e.g. target output values) 3. (Design) Identify alternatives (e.g. potential input values) 4. (Design) Define the criteria (for comparing alternatives) 5. (Design)Select a decision-making technique/tool 6. (Choice) Evaluate alternatives using the criteria 7. (Choice) Check if solution solves the problem

Cleaning Data in Excel

1. Clean data, fix errors, remove duplicates, remove spaces 2. Separate non-atomic data (multiple values in one cell) 3. Prepare headers as field names, with no spaces 4. Be sure all values are consistent in a column, no mixed data types in a column 5. Remove blank rows or sub-headings, etc. 6. Delete a few columns and rows surrounding block to be sure hat no extraneous things get included in move area 7. When combing databases be sure notifications are consistent, and if they are not, fix them in Excel prior to port into Access. For example one place state names may be spelled out and in another place they are abbreviated

Decision Making Process

1. Identifying the problem -Includes describing both where are you now, and where you want to be -Requires being careful to not confuse problem with symptoms 2. Determining the Requirements and Goals -Understanding the difference between them (Requirements are minimally acceptable solutions "must haves", Goals are ideal solutions "like to haves" 3. Identifying the alternatives -a method to transform the current condition into the desired condition or state (Brainstorming, Nominal Group Technique) 4. Determining the Criteria -Finding objective measures of the requirements and goals -Each criteria must independent of other criteria -Each requirement/goal must represented by at least one criteria

Numbered Steps in Excel to Access

1. Look at the data an figure out the ERD 2. Clean and prepare worksheet in Excel and move to Access 3. Create a blank Access Database 4. Import worksheet from Excel to a single Access Table (Raw Data Table) 5. Create Entity Tables from Raw Data Table using Make Table Query 6. Add, if needed, a Primary Key field to table; and set Data Types, Input Masks, Validation Rules & Text in the table 7. Continue this process until all Entity Tables are created 8. Designate all Primary Keys after all tables have been created 9. Add Table Relationships once tables are completely designed

Data Mining

A BI analytics tool sued to explore large amounts of data for hidden patterns to predict future trends and behaviors for use in decision making

Scatter Diagram

A graph in which the values of two variables are plotted along two axes, the pattern of the resulting points revealing any correlation present

Conversation Funnal

A graphical representation that summarizes the steps a consumer takes in making the decision to buy a product and become a customer

Pros/Cons Analysis

A non-mathematical technique where you simply list the advantages and disadvantages for each alternative (weakest method)

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

A set of integrated programs that manage a company's vital business operations for an entire organization

Cross-Industry Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM)

A size-phrase structured approach for the planning and execution of a data mining project

Association Analysis

A specialized set of algorithms sorts through data and forms statistical rules about relationships among the items

Word Cloud

A visual depiction of a set of words that have been grouped together because of the frequency of their occurrence

Enterprise Systems

An enterprise system is central to individuals and organizations of all sizes -Ensures that information can be shared across all business functions and all levels of management to support the running and managing of a business Business rely on enterprise systems to perform daily activities in areas such as: -Product supply and distribution -Sales and marketing -Human resources -Manufacturing -Accounting and taxes

Structured or Programmed Decisions

Decisions that are routine and repetitive and often have a well-defined procedure Example: Managers of a fast food restaurant needs to decide on the number of hamburgers buns to buy for tomorrow Target Output: Ensure a very low probability (<5%) that the restaurant will run out of hamburger buns tomorrow Input: Potential number of hamburger buns needed (decision variable) Process information- -Effect of the day of the week and month on sales -Effect of local events on sales -Effect of weather on sales -Constraints on the number of hamburger buns Managers could program a spreadsheet that would output the probability of a stockout given a certain number of hamburger buns for each day

Semi-structured Decisions

Decisions that have some elements that are structured and other elements that are unstructured Example: -Planning annual compensation for employees in a large company -Decision Support System (DSS): routes driven by Federal Express vehicles

Finish Setting up Table

Go to Table Design View: -Add a new field with auto number to be the primary key, if needed, because you do not want text phrases s a PK values -Set Data Types and Size -Add input masks as needed -Add validation rules & validation text as needed -Add field descriptions

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System

Helps a company manage all aspects of customer encounters, including marketing, sales, distribution, accounting, and customer service -The goal of CRM is to understand and anticipate the needs of current and potential customers -CRM is used primarily in sales, marketing, and service organizations: to capture and view data about customers and to improve communications -CRM Software: Automates and integrates the functions of sales, marketing, and service in an organizations

Neutral Analysis

Historical data is examined for patterns that are used to make predictions

Import Data to Access

Import the worksheet data that you have cleaned and prepared as a single temporary table into Access -Go to get external data tab -Select-Import Excel -Don't choose Primary Key, this can get in the way later -The import table is a temporary Raw Data table, it is only used to create the needed database tables

Deluge of Video

Information that can't be processed quick enough

Electromagnetic Jamming

Inhibits the transfer of information electronically by humans

Basic Phases of Decision-making Process

Intelligence -Becoming aware that change to current state is needed -May be systems that alert to a potential problem -Determine requirements/goals of corrective action Design -Developing alternative approaches to resolution -Determining methodology as to how selection will be made Choice -Gathering data and converting it to information -Applying decision making methodology -Making decision -Follow-up to verify results

Drill-Down Analysis

Involves the interactive examination of high-level summary data in increasing detail to gain insight into certain elements Example: In reviewing the worldwide sales for the past quarter, the VP of sales might want to drill down to view the sales of each country -Further drilling could be done to view the sales for a specific country for the last quarter -A third level of drill-down analysis could be done to see sales for a specific country for a specific month of the quarter -A fourth level of analysis could be accomplished by drilling down to sales by product line for a particular country by month

Why Privacy?

Limit on Power -Privacy is a limit on government power & companies. The more someone knows, the more power they can have over us Respect for Individuals -If a person has a reasonable desire to keep something private, it is disrespectful to ignore that person's wishes Reputation Management -How we are judged by others affects our opportunities, friendships, and overall well-being Maintaining Boundaries -Boundaries are both physical and information Trust -Breaches of confidentiality are breaches of trust Freedom of Thought and Speech -A watchful eye over everything we read or watch can chill us from exploring ideas outside the mainstream Privacy helps individuals maintain their autonomy and individually

Single Elimination

Only one moves forward after comparison

Advanced Analytics

Predictive Analytics and Prescriptive Analytics

Information Privacy

Privacy of information is the confidentiality of the information collected by organizations about individuals, -who are their services -who are part of the organzaitons Everyone should be concerned about, -their own information privacy and -the privacy of customers, employees, business partners, students, parents, children -basically all those who are associated in way The Third Reich killed people because of data collected on them. Nations, like Belgium & France required registration, the Nazi's came in and took the data and killed people of certain religions

Descriptive Analysis

Set of techniques that describe what has happened in the past Examples: -Data queries: like a filter in excel or an access query -Reports: like an income statement, a regional report or a PivotTable with multiple criteria -Descriptive statistics: mean, median, mode, standard deviation, correlation -Data visualization: charts, tables, conditional formatting -What if Excel models: like income statement budget with assumption table or a fixed variable cost analysis -Data dashboards: collection of items such as tables, charts, and descriptive statistics that will update as new data arrives

Predictive Analyics

Set of techniques that used models constructed from past data to predict the future or ascertain impact of one variable on another Examples: -Linear regression: models to help predict one variable based on a one or more other variables -Time series analysis & Forecasting: using data to make forecasts of unknown future -Data mining: methods to reveal patterns and relationships in data

Prescriptive Analytics

Set of techniques to indicate the best course of action; what decision to make to optimization outcome Examples: -Optimization models: A mathematical model that gives the best decision, subject to the situations constraints / We'll use the Excel feature called "Solver" which can tell us things like what number of units to produce to maximize profit -Simulation: use Native Excel Functions to create a simulation -Decision analysis

Edward Snowden

Snowden, a contracted system administrator, stole 1.7 million documents and initially released only a few hundred. He did this bu assuming identity of those with higher security clearance and then copying files onto a thumb drive. He reached out to journalist in late 2012 and released documents in 2013. The Guardian and Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in publishing the documents that Edward Snowden made available.

Automated Decision Making

Some structured decisions can be automated leading to what is called automated decision making Example: Algorithmic trading stock equities use automated decision making to make trades on behalf of investors -Trading systems that are reliant on complex mathematical formulas and high-speed, computer programs to determine trading strategies. These strategies use electronic platforms to enter trading orders with an algorithm which executes pre-programmed trading instructions accounting for a variety of variables such as timing, price, and volume -Algorithmic trading is widely used by investment banks, pension funds, mutual funds

Thorough Comparison

Takes into account all comparisons, choose one with the most wins or higher score after filling in chart

Link Analysis Map of Social Group

Tool that analyzes data from various social networks, as well as other sources like phone call databases, to determine hubs of activity. This would enable the identifying of targets.

Update Anomaly

What if the name of the project PPV5678 is changed to Sludge disposal?

National Security Agency (NSA)

a U.S. intelligence agency responsible for providing the United States government with encrypted communications (information assurance) and the reading of encrypted communications (signals intelligence) -The NSA also creates and maintains secure computer network operations for the U.S. Government and prepares for network warfare -Originating as a unit to decipher code communication in World War II, NSA was officially formed by President Truman in 1952 -Since then, it has become one of the largest of U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget, operating under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense and reporting to the Director of National Intelligence

NSA Prism System

enabled deputizing of corporate America to surveillance of Americans. When companies like Yahoo protested, like what about a warranty process instead, NSA went before a secret court and Yahoo lost and had to cooperate

Case-based reasoning

historical if-then-else cases are used to recognize patterns

Maximum Cardinality

the maximum number of entities that can be involved in a relationship

Cardinality

the maximum number of times that an instance of an entity (table) can be associated with instances of another entity

Modality

the minimum number of times that an instance of an entity can be associated with instances of another entity

Cardinality Constraints

the number of instances of one entity that can or must be associated with each instance of another entity

Plausible Deniability

where don't know who attacked, so simply stop attack

Decision Making Applied to Killer Robots

(Intelligence): Identify and clearly define the problem -Centralization of Power in use of automated killer robots (Intelligence): Determine requirements and goals -Minimum is transparency (requirement) -Ideal is treaty specifying accountability (goal) (Design): Identify alternatives (e.g. potential input values) -Public sentiment sought and honored, then bills & treaties developed that specify alternatives (Design): Define the criteria (for comparing alternatives) -Policing robots present, app notifying of presence of killer robot -Must be able to enforce human presence on making kill decision -Must be able to enforce limitations of destructive potential (Design): Select decision-making technique/tool -System that categorizes & summarizes all the information, ranking alternatives according to criteria (Choice): Evaluate alternatives using the criteria -Best if a weighing of criteria, when there are many factors (Choice): Check if solution solves the problem -Continual monitoring of situation

Data Analytics

- A process of inspecting - Cleaning, transforming - Modeling data - Discovering useful information -Suggesting conclusions - Supporting decision making

Summary of Normalization

-1NF: each instance atttribute is completely dependent upon PK -2NF: when concatenated PK, each instance attribute is completely dependent upon all PKs -3NF: each instance attribute is dependent only on PK and not a secondary attribute

Normalization Example

-A business keeps data on its employees (ID, first name, last name, rank, department, salary) -Rank is a number (e.g. 1 for lowest, 5 for highest) -An employee's salary depends only on the rank and department of employee -Employees can take extra training courses, and this data is stored as well (Course ID, course description, completion date)

The following key assumptions must be satisfied when using linear regression on a set of data:

-A linear relationship between the independent (X) and dependent (Y) variables must exist -Errors in the prediction of the value of Y are distributed in a manner that approaches the normal distribution curve -Errors in the prediction of the value of Y are all independent of one another

Linear Regression

-A mathematical technique for predicting the value of a dependent variable based on a single independent variable and the linear relationship between the two -Consists of finding the best-fitting straight line through a set of observations of the dependent and interdependent variables

Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)

-A method to analyze multidimensional data from many different perspectives -OLAP enables users to identify issues and opportunities and perform trend analysis

First Normal Form (1NF)

-A model is in 1NF, for every instance of an entity, each attribute of the instance is completely determined by the instance's PK -In other words, 1NF holds when there are no instance attributes that have multiple values -To put an ERD into 1NF, add another entity and 1:M relationship to it

Second Normal Form (2NF)

-A model is in 2NF if it is a 1NF and for every instance of an entity having a PK with 2 or more components, each attribute of the instance is completely determined by the totality of the instance's PK, not just by some of its components -To put an ERD into 2NF, add another entity and a 1:M relationship to it

Third Normal Form (3NF)

-A model is in 3NF if it is in 2NF and for every instance of an entity, each secondary attribute is dependent only on the PK, not on any other secondary attribute -To put an ERD into 3NF, add another entity and 1:M relationship, if dependent on another secondary attribute (which is not a FK) or move attribute to other entity, if dependent on a FK

Create Parent Entities from Data

-Add the Raw Table to Query Design View -Select Fields to be in Parent Entity -Toggle to Datasheet view to look at data to be sure it is ready for creating a table -Use Group-by (Click Totals) to remove duplicate entries -Once it looks good, click Make Table and enter Entity name -Finally click Run! to actually make the entity

Business Analytics can answer:

-After making the changes, are the desired outcomes as expected? -What factors can influence a better outcome for business? -Do we see a trend or pattern emerging? -What is happening now? -When and where has it happened? -What are the factors that led it to happen? -What has happened?

Data Analysis

-Analyze results -Communicate findings -Use findings for program improvement -Aim for a systematic effort -Keep your audience in mind -Pay attention to the usability of your evacuation report

Batch Processing System

-Business transactions are accumulated over a period of time and prepared for processing as a single unit or batch -Essential characteristic: the delay between an event and the processing of the related transaction to update the organization's records

Transaction Processing Systems (TPSs)

-Capture and process detailed data necessary to update the organization's records about fundamental business operations -Include order entry, inventory control, payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, etc.

Strategic Planning (More Unstructured Decisions)

-Choosing the organization's objectives -Deciding how the achieve objectives -Predicting the future

Add Table Relationships

-Click the DATABASE TOOLS tab -Select relationships -Add all tables, both parent and child, that you created -When setting joins be sure to drag from the parent to the child, where the field instance values can exists once in the parent entity and multiple times in the child entity -Be sure to set referential integrity

Key Features of a CRM System include:

-Contact management -Sales management -Customer support -Marketing automation -Analysis -Social networking -Access by smartphones -Import contact data

Data Cubes

-Contain numeric facts called measures, which are categorized by dimensions, such as time and geography -Can be built to summarize unit sales of a specific item on a specific day for a specific store

Unstructured or Non-programmed Decisions

Decisions that are novel, that do not have a [re-existing procedure Example: -Decision to introduce a new smartwatch by an electronics company -Executive Information System (EIS): where to locate a new manufacturing facility

Business Intelligence vs. Business Analytics

BI: -Oriented to standard and consistent metrics and analytics -Focused on dashboards and predefined reports -Primarily answers predefined questions -Provides end users indirect raw data access through cubes, reports, and summarized -Exception based reporting BA: -Oriented towards ad-hoc analysis of past performance -Focused on interactive and investigative analysis by user -Primarily used to derive new insights and understanding -Explore the unknown and discover new patterns -Relies on low-level data to provide visibility to unexpected activity

Privacy Considerations

Bad assumptions: -"Only people who do bad things care about privacy" -"There is an implicit bargain, if you are willing to render yourself sufficiently harmless, then, and only then, can you be free of dissident behavior and are willing to be monitored anytime" But, what about the panopticon effect? A panopticon is a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners could at all times observed

Decision Matrix

Compare all alternatives against all criteria by scoring each, i.e. 1-10, where higher number is better -This is widely used in business -This considers all criteria to be of equal importance -If all criteria are not of equal importance, then use a weighted average when combing scores across criteria, by, assigning percent weighs across criteria that must sum to 100% then multiplying criteria weight times score then sum to get a total score

Paired Comparisons

Compare pairs of alternatives to find the "winning" alternative