Analog Devices for Teaching Decision Skills to Adolescents

Personalized decision analysis (PDA) ¹ is a well-articulated quantitative logic for inferring the action and inference implications of an appropriately defined set of assessments and evaluations, typically expressed as numerical probabilities and utilities (Raiffa, 1968; Watson & Buede, 1987). This type of analysis is increasingly used to help professional deciders, such as government officials and business men and women, to help make and defend their decisions (Brown, 1987; Ulvila & Brown, 1982). Much less effort has been devoted to applying the mathematical formulation to help untrained individuals make personal decisions.