An improved method for solving multiple criteria problems involving discrete alternatives

An approach is presented for solving a discrete-multiple-criteria problem. The approach asks pairwise comparisons of a decision-maker. Under mild assumptions, the method obtains the most preferred alternative. The required number of pairwise comparisons is generally modest. The authors´ experience with the method indicates that for reasonable underlying utility functions, a heuristic stopping rule generally yields the most preferred alternative after several comparisons, usually fewer than 20.