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Evaluation of Information in the Context of Decision-Making

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Information Quality in Information Fusion and Decision Making

Part of the book series: Information Fusion and Data Science ((IFDS))

Abstract

In a broad sense, solving a problem can be treated as deciding or making a decision what the solution to this problem is. In particular, decision-making with respect to a question means finding an answer to the question. Thus, solution of any problem can be treated as decision-making. However, traditionally decision-making is understood as making a choice from a set of alternatives, which are usually alternatives of actions. Here we consider decision-making in the traditional form exploring the role and features of information in this process. In section “The Process of Decision-Making”, we consider existing models and elaborate a more detailed model of decision-making. In section “Properties of Information and Their Evaluation”, we demonstrate that each stage and each step of decision-making involve work with information—information search, acquisition, processing, evaluation, and application. Evaluation of information is especially important for decision-making because utilization of false or incorrect information can result in wrong and even disastrous decisions. We show how to evaluate quality of information in the context of decision-making, what properties are important for information quality, and what measures can be useful for information evaluation. The obtained results are aimed at improving quality of information in decision-making by people and development of better computer decision support systems and expert systems.

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Acknowledgement

The author would like to express gratitude to Éloi Bossé for his useful remarks.

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Correspondence to Mark Burgin .

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Burgin, M. (2019). Evaluation of Information in the Context of Decision-Making. In: Bossé, É., Rogova, G. (eds) Information Quality in Information Fusion and Decision Making. Information Fusion and Data Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03643-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03643-0_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03642-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03643-0

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