C. West Churchman - Decision Quotes

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The concern of OR with finding an optimum decision, policy, or design is one of its essential characteristics. It does not seek merely to define a better solution to a problem than the one in use; it seeks the best solution... [It] can be characterized as the application of scientific methods, techniques, and tools to problems involving the operations of systems so as to provide those in control of the operations with optimum solutions to the problems.

C. West Churchman
If the chance of error alone were the sole basis for evaluating methods of inference, we would never reach a decision, but would merely keep increasing the sample size indefinitely.

C. West Churchman
A system may actually exist as a natural aggregation of component parts found in Nature, or it may be a man-contrived aggregation – a way of looking at a problem which results from a deliberate decision to assume that a set of elements are related and constitute such a thing called 'a system.

C. West Churchman
An objective of O. R. as it emerged from this evolution of industrial organization, is to provide managers of the organizations with a scientific basis for solving problems involving the interaction of the components of the organization in the best interest of the organization as a whole. A decision which is best for the organization as a whole is called optimum decision.

C. West Churchman
Scientists whose work has no clear, practical implications would want to make their decisions considering such things as:
the relative worth of (1) more observations, (2) greater scope of his conceptual model, (3) simplicity, (4) precision of language, (5) accuracy of the probability assignment.

C. West Churchman
There would be cases where we would not want to accept an hypothesis even though the evidence gives a high d. c. [degree of confirmation] score, because we are fearful of the consequences of a wrong decision.

C. West Churchman