Multi-objective Decision Analysis

Determining Continuous Probabilities

The procedure for eliciting probabilities for continuous uncertain events is slightly different from the procedure for eliciting probabilities for ­discrete uncertain events. The two procedures are different because discrete ­uncertain events only have a few possible outcomes, whereas continuous uncertain events have a theoretically infinite number of outcomes. While the discrete uncertain event “number of cars sold in a month (out of three)” will result in only one of four possible outcomes (i.e., 0, 1, 2, or 3), a continuous uncertain event such as “total operating costs in the quarter” can result in an immense number of possible outcomes. For this reason, it would be very difficult to assign individual ...