Decision Making,Scaling, and Number Crunching

The purpose of this note is to comment on the artificiality of using known scales of measurement (or conveniently improvised numbers) to make decisions. In particular, the pitfalls of trying to please the decision maker and of using normalization as a number crunching tool are discussed. Finally, an example is given to show what is needed to develop a workable and theoretically sound theory for multi-criteria decisions and to show that the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) meets these demands.