Decisions involve many intangibles that need to be traded off. To do that, they have to be measured along side tangibles whose measurements must also be evaluated as to, how well, they serve the objectives of the decision maker. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a theory of measurement through pairwise comparisons and relies on the judgements of experts to derive priority scales. It is these scales that measure intangibles in relative terms. The comparisons are made using a scale of absolute judgements that represents, how much more, one element dominates another with respect to a given attribute. The judgements may be inconsistent, and how to measure inconsistency and improve the judgements, when possible to obtain better consistency is a concern of the AHP. The derived priority scales are synthesised by multiplying them by the priority of their parent nodes and adding for all such nodes. An illustration is included.

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People make three general types of judgments to express importance, preference, or likelihood and use them to choose the best among alternatives in the presence of environmental, social, political, and other influences. They base these judgments on knowledge in memory or from analyzing benefits, costs, and risks. From past knowledge, we sometimes can develop standards of excellence and poorness and use them to rate the alternatives one at a time. This is useful in such repetitive situations as student admissions and salary raises that must conform with established norms. Without norms one compares alternatives instead of rating them. Comparisons must fall in an admissible range of consistency. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) includes both the rating and comparison methods. Rationality requires developing a reliable hierarchic structure or feedback network that includes criteria of various types of influence, stakeholders, and decision alternatives to determine the best choice. P olicy makers at all levels of decision facilitate their decision making. Through making in organizations use multiple trade offs it clarifies the advantages and criteria to analyze their complex problems. disadvantages of policy options under cir-Multicriteria thinking is used formally to cumstances of risk and uncertainty. It

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