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Learn how to use the value-for-money chart to factor in costs and other considerations into your final decision – the highest ranked alternative is not necessarily the best option!

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Quick reference

Value-for-Money Chart

Helps you factor in costs and other considerations in your decision by weighing them against the alternatives’ scores.

When to use

Use this when you have costs and other considerations for your alternatives that you want to incorporate in your decision when trying to select an alternative. This chart also helps you find which alternative provides the best value for your money.

Instructions

Displaying costs and other considerations

Axes
  • To find the best value for money, set the y-axis as alternative score, and the x-axis as cost (either monetary or any other type of cost)
  • Best suited for displaying continuous numerical variables, although it can display any type of numerical or list data.
Bubble size
  • Can be used to display continuous numerical variables or list data
  • You can change the maximum bubble size in the options menu
Bubble color
  • Use this to display any list or text data
  • This is the only option through which text data can be displayed on the chart
  • To remove all bubbles belonging to a color (category) from the display, click on that category in the legend below the chart

Y/X ratio

  • Can be viewed by clicking on an alternative on the chart and viewing the details in the menu on the right
  • If the y-axis is set to score, and the x-axis is set to cost, then the y/x ratio can be called the benefit-to-cost ratio.
    • In that case, the higher the y/x ratio, the more benefit for the cost, i.e. the greater the value for your money.
    • Be careful not to rely solely on the y/x ratio to find the best value for money. Also look at other considerations, and in some cases, score scaling (see "scaling scores" lesson)

Efficiency frontier (Pareto frontier)

  • This is the orange line connecting some of your alternatives
  • Connects all the alternatives that are unambiguously better than all the others. However, an alternative on the line is not unambiguously better than another on the line.
  • When choosing between alternatives on the line, take into account the other considerations (bubble size and/or bubble color) and how much of the x-value you are willing to sacrifice for a better y-value (e.g. how much more are you willing to pay for a better scoring alternative?)
  • If there are not at least two alternatives that are unambiguously better than all the others, you will not see this line on the graph.

Quadrant colors

  • By default, the top-left quadrant will be shown in green. The green quadrant should represent the quadrant with the best alternatives.
  • If the top-left quadrant is not the best quadrant, you can select a different quadrant to display in green by going to the options tab in the menu on the right
  • You can turn off these colors in the options tab in the menu on the right, by unchecking "'traffic light' quadrants"

Chart sizing

  • Change whether or not the axes start at 0 by going to the options tab in the menu on the right and ticking/unticking "axes start at 0"
  • Zoom in by holding down the left mouse button and dragging across the chart area that you want to zoom in to
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  • 00:05 In this video, we will be looking at a really cool feature of 1000minds
  • 00:09 called the value-for-money chart.
  • 00:12 As the name suggests, this chart helps you find the best value for money.
  • 00:17 And it does this by factoring in not just the score, but also any costs or
  • 00:22 any other considerations that you specified on the criteria page.
  • 00:27 To access this page in the menu on the left, click on Results and
  • 00:32 click on Alternative selection and that'll bring you here.
  • 00:37 If you didn't specify any costs or other considerations,
  • 00:40 then you'll just see this table down here.
  • 00:46 By default, the y-axis shows you the scores of your alternatives.
  • 00:51 But you can change this at any time by going through a drop-down menu up here and
  • 00:56 selecting any cost or other consideration that you want to display.
  • 01:01 But if you want to look at the best value for your money,
  • 01:05 then you should keep the y-axis as total score and
  • 01:08 set the x-axis to display the cost of your alternatives.
  • 01:14 If you do that, then the alternatives with the best value for
  • 01:18 your money will be those in the green quadrant up here.
  • 01:22 Those will have the highest score for the lowest cost.
  • 01:26 And those of the least value for your money will be those in the red quadrant
  • 01:30 down here, which will have the lowest score for the highest cost.
  • 01:35 Anything of median value will be in the yellow quadrants.
  • 01:41 If you think that the best alternatives wouldn't be those have a high y value and
  • 01:46 a low x value, then you can change this at any time by going to the Options and
  • 01:51 selecting whichever quadrant you think has the best alternatives.
  • 01:55 And the colors will update accordingly.
  • 01:58 So the quadrant of your best alternatives will always be shown in green, and
  • 02:02 the least favorable alternatives would always be in the red.
  • 02:07 You can also change the bubble size to factor in any additional considerations.
  • 02:12 So you might think about risk levels or safety levels.
  • 02:18 Or in my case, I'm going to be putting in the confidence for the cost estimates.
  • 02:24 And then you can use that to help you decide on your alternatives.
  • 02:29 If you want to display any additional variables, you can do so
  • 02:33 by changing the bubble color.
  • 02:35 Here, you can either select any of your criteria, Or
  • 02:41 any considerations that are text type data, and
  • 02:44 that therefore can't be displayed on the axes or through bubble size.
  • 02:50 In my case, that would be to fit with the government core business.
  • 02:54 If any category is of particular importance to you,
  • 02:58 you can either hover over that category in the legend below the chart.
  • 03:03 Or click on any other categories to remove them from the display and
  • 03:07 show only the categories you want to limit your choices to.
  • 03:13 Click on any alternative on the chart to see more details including the score,
  • 03:18 the categories in each criterion, and the other considerations and the rank.
  • 03:25 You also see this y/x ratio over here.
  • 03:29 When the y-axis is set to total score and the x-axis is set to cost,
  • 03:34 then the y/x ratio represents a benefits-to-cost ratio.
  • 03:40 But what does this mean?
  • 03:41 Well, a higher benefits-to-cost ratio will generally mean better value for
  • 03:46 your money.
  • 03:48 But that does not mean that the alternative of the highest
  • 03:51 benefits-to-cost ratio is necessarily the best option.
  • 03:55 You still have to take into account other considerations.
  • 03:58 For example, what you set as the bubble size, what you set as the bubble color,
  • 04:03 and how much of the benefit you're willing to give up for a lower cost.
  • 04:09 That brings us to this orange line here, which is referred to as
  • 04:13 the efficiency frontier, or otherwise known as the Pareto frontier.
  • 04:18 This line connects all the points that are unambiguously better than any other
  • 04:22 alternatives that are not on the line.
  • 04:25 For example, take a look at proposal M versus proposal W.
  • 04:29 It will be crazy to choose proposal M over proposal W because
  • 04:34 proposal W has both a lower cost and a higher score than proposal M.
  • 04:40 But what about proposal H, which has a lower score, but
  • 04:44 also a lower cost than proposal W?
  • 04:47 Well, even in this case, even though you might not choose proposal W,
  • 04:52 you still have proposal E on the efficiency frontier,
  • 04:55 which has both a higher score and a lower cost than proposal H.
  • 05:01 Now, if proposal E didn't exist,
  • 05:03 then proposal H would be on the efficiency frontier instead.
  • 05:07 And then which proposal you choose among those in the frontier would have to depend
  • 05:12 on other factors like how much of the score are you willing to sacrifice for
  • 05:16 a lower cost?
  • 05:18 What is the bubble size?
  • 05:20 What is the bubble color?
  • 05:22 And then you would make your decision by factoring in all of those variables.
  • 05:28 In the Options menu,
  • 05:29 you have several settings that you can change to customize the chart more.
  • 05:34 For example, you can choose whether or
  • 05:36 not the axes start at zero, how big you want the bubbles to be.
  • 05:41 Or whether or not you want the quadrants to be colored,
  • 05:44 which can be changed by toggling the traffic light quadrants option.
  • 05:50 If you find any part of the chart to be too cluttered with overlapping points and
  • 05:55 you would like to examine it in more detail,
  • 05:58 you can zoom in by holding down the left mouse button and
  • 06:01 dragging to select the chart area that you want to examine more closely.
  • 06:07 You can always reset to show the entire chart area by clicking the Reset Zoom
  • 06:11 button above the chart.
  • 06:14 If you want to save the chart as an image file, you can do so by clicking the icon
  • 06:19 with the three lines in the top right corner of the chart over here.
  • 06:23 Then you can export the chart either as a PNG or an SVG file.
  • 06:29 And that's how you use the value-for-money chart.

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