ABSTRACT
Making a good decision means getting all seven factors “right,” which is rarely an easy thing to do for complicated situations. Formal methods usually improve only our ability to assess the robustness of the decision. Activities to identify the “correct” decisions to make, identify the most appropriate decision maker, fully explore the option space, and distinguish relevant and useful data from bad data are all more an art than a science. Only after a type of decision was made many times, so all the seven factors have knowable bounds, can formal methods nd the best decision. For example, deciding what car to buy with what features or what medical treatment to perform for a well-known disease with a cure can both be formulated in such a way that all seven questions can be addressed in a formal way. But deciding the best car to make, or the details of a successful medical treatment, is not fully determinable by formal methods alone.
