Preference Values

Quick reference

• 00:05 Looking at your preference values might feel like a horoscope reading your mind.
• 00:10 When you see them, you might think
• 00:12 Wow! This is exactly how I feel about these criteria.
• 00:16 How do you know?
• 00:17 Well, what does the mind knew your preferences because of the trade-offs you
• 00:22 made, which is what establishes your preference values.
• 00:26 On the preference values page, we can examine it in more detail how
• 00:31 important each of our criteria is to us, by looking at a series of graphs and
• 00:36 charts that break down the preference values of our criteria, and
• 00:40 their levels and a variety of different ways.
• 00:43 And just like with any other term in 1000minds,
• 00:47 we can customize the name preference values and change it to anything we
• 00:51 want by clicking on the drop-down menu in the menu on the right.
• 00:56 For example, they're also often called point values or points, or
• 01:00 we can call it anything else that we want that makes more sense to us.
• 01:07 The first table shows the preference values of each criterion and
• 01:11 the degree of performance of each category in the criterion.
• 01:15 The preference value of the highest category represents the relative
• 01:19 importance of that criterion.
• 01:21 So for example, great weather has a preference value of 38.9%.
• 01:28 And that number also represents the relative importance of the weather
• 01:32 criterion as a whole.
• 01:34 The numbers in bold will sum to a total of 100%.
• 01:39 This allows you to interpret a preference values of your criteria in relative terms.
• 01:44 For example,
• 01:45 public transport is roughly four times as important to us as the beach.
• 01:51 Our ideal alternative if it existed,
• 01:53 would have the highest level in each of these categories,
• 01:57 which when you sum together to bolded numbers gives it a total score of 100%.
• 02:02 That is your highest ranked possible alternative,
• 02:06 which you can view under all possible alternatives.
• 02:13 The lowest ranked possible alternative, on the other hand,
• 02:17 would be the one that has the lowest level in each of these criteria,
• 02:21 which gives it a total score of 0.
• 02:26 The preference values are also displayed as bar graphs, but
• 02:29 this can be toggled off in the menu on the right.
• 02:34 Here we can also choose whether we want to criteria ordered by
• 02:38 the relative importance, or
• 02:40 if you want them in the order that we enter them in on the criteria page.
• 02:46 And more condensed and visual way to view
• 02:49 the relative importances of these criteria is the polar chart.
• 02:54 The bigger the radius of the sector the greater the preference value
• 02:58 of that criterion.
• 03:00 So we see that weather has the largest radius because it is the most important.
• 03:05 And beach has the smallest radius because that criterion matters to us the least
• 03:09 when making our decision.
• 03:12 As you can see, you can view the legend and
• 03:15 exact percentages of each category by hovering over a sector.
• 03:20 Maybe they want to know the exact ratios of the preference values of our
• 03:25 criteria relative to each other.
• 03:28 When deciding what city to move to,
• 03:30 how much more important is the weather to us than public transportation?
• 03:36 If we scroll down, we see this table here which gives us exactly those ratios.
• 03:42 Any number in bold means that the criterion in the column is that much
• 03:46 more important than the criterion in a row corresponding to that number.
• 03:50 And the inverse is true for the numbers that are not bolded.
• 03:54 So now we know that the weather is 1.3 times as important to us as public
• 03:59 transportation.
• 04:01 Or alternatively, public transportation is 0.8 times as important to us as weather.
• 04:08 Wow, that's neat.
• 04:11 Lastly, here is a line graph that shows us how
• 04:14 the preference values of each of our criteria increase by category.
• 04:19 Of particular interest is a curvature of each line, is it linear or
• 04:24 is the slope increasing or decreasing?
• 04:28 This tells us how much the preference value would increase by moving to higher
• 04:32 categories on a criterion.
• 04:35 So for example,
• 04:36 we see that weather increases a lot as it moves up in category.
• 04:41 But public transport and nightlife increase a lot first, but then they level
• 04:45 up when you move between the second to highest and the highest category.
• 04:51 Now that we understand these charts we want to export some of this data.
• 04:56 We can export the table of our preference values by clicking the Export button
• 05:01 on the top, which gives us an Excel file with the table.
• 05:05 The charts can be exported as image files by clicking on the three lines at
• 05:10 the top right of the chart area.
• 05:14 So now you know what it is that really matters to you, and how much.

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