What is the Ordinal Priority Approach?

Abstract

Humans, in their most important role as decision-makers, make choices every day. Simple choices don't even require a calculator, but more complicated ones require some calculation. Complicated choices, such as the ones where one has to choose one (or multiple) alternatives from a list of alternatives, whereas each alternative may be better than the other on different conflicting attributes, are not easy to make. Such problems are usually referred to as multiple attribute decision-making (MADM), and one of the easiest and most effective ways to solve such problems is the Ordinal Priority Approach (OPA). In this article, readers will learn: (1) what is the OPA (and some discussion on its background), (2) what distinguishes it from other MADM methods, (3) its scale, and (4) how to apply it. Readers, including those with the most elementary knowledge of mathematics and operations research, would find this article particularly useful as every effort has been made to make content easy to comprehend.