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Summary: Your first and permanent reference text on decision-making
Review: David offers us an accessible yet amazingly complete and practical book on decision-making. The presentation is very clear and understandable. The contents are relevant to real business situations. The examples are easy to translate to your real life. This is your first introduction and permanent reference to decision analysis. A bible for decision-analysts as well as decision-makers.
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Summary: Best decision analysis book yet.
Review: I found Mr. Skinner's book to be a lively and interesting treatment of Decision Analysis. This is a "must have" book for managers at all levels of the organization. I especially liked the Monte Carlo simulation in Chptr 12 and the "How to" guides at the end. I also liked his personal application cases that illustrate how to use decision analysis principles for important personal decisions.
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Summary: Excellent clearly written reference
Review: I found this to be a very readable guide to decision analysis. Excellent reference for any person or organization that would like to upgrade their decision quality using the techniques of decision risk analysis.
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Summary: This is a great decision analysis reference book.
Review: If you only buy one book about decision analysis this year, this should be the one. It shows the reader a specific step-by-step process for decision making. The basic decision analysis approach and the facilitiating the decision process sections provide clear, concise, detailed information to assist any type of decision maker - manager, professional, or practitioner. The pracitical guides included in the book include many helpful templates and case studies. They assist the reader in scaling the decision process, eliciting issues, building influence diagrams, and developing strategy tables. They also are useful for creating decision hierarchies, assessing data ranges, and building decision trees. I really enjoy the interactivity of this book with it's web site.
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Summary: Fantasic user-friendly book
Review: Mr. Skinner's book is the most practical book I have found on the subject of Decision Analysis. His writing style and examples present complex topics and techniques in an easy to understand manner. This book has provided me with very valuable examples and stories that I use daily in my work. I have many books on this subject, but this is the only book I recommend to co-workers and anyone interested in decision analysis. I especially like the way he has incorporated his web site into the book.
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Summary: Very practical, stimulating book
Review: One of the best books on the market, for this topic! David's broad experience and ease of explanation contributes to this being a top choice as a teaching reference. 'Introduction to Decision Analysis' contains the appropriate level of detail for those interested in going beyond the basics, while being easily understandable for those that are just learning about decision management. Over 200 copies of this book reside on the bookshelves of individuals within our company...and I would venture that none of them are collecting dust!
Rating:
Summary: If you really want to understand decision management...
Review: One of the best books on the market, for this topic! David's broad experience and ease of explanation contributes to this being a top choice as a teaching reference. 'Introduction to Decision Analysis' contains the appropriate level of detail for those interested in going beyond the basics, while being easily understandable for those that are just learning about decision management. Over 200 copies of this book reside on the bookshelves of individuals within our company...and I would venture that none of them are collecting dust!
Rating: 
Summary: Weak and Disappointing Introduction to Decision Analysis
Review: Overall I think this is a poor introduction to Decision Analysis. The author gives a sketchy explanation of key concepts such as how to draw influence diagrams and decision trees. He emphasis their importance several times, but never gives a thorough explanation of how to create them, with insufficient examples. What is TRULY bothersome is some of the exercises in the early chapters ask the reader to create these diagrams, without the "how to draw them" part ever having been explained!
Other issues I have with this book:
- several typos and grammatical errors
- some of the examples appear to have been "borrowed" from many other (better) books, such as those listed below.
- there is a shortage of concrete examples, and the few examples given are not sufficiently explained. I was not able to follow the analysis process of how to apply some of the concepts explained in the book, specifically on creating influence diagrams
- the author's arrogance is insulting. At the beginning of each chapter he quotes an eminent figure. Some of the quotes come from Einstein, Sun Tzu, Theodore Roosevel. The author has the audacity to put one of his OWN QUOTES in this same space reserved for these other renowned people.
- the author's website, to which he references frequently, was not active every time I checked (last checked July 2004).
- dissapointing explanation of Net Present Value (NPV), an important concept when evaluating consequences of many financial decisions
- very poor explanation of discount rates, another important term
- glossary fails to list important terms, such as discount rate
The writing was OK. The book does provide a mediocre overview to Decision Analysis (DA). The author has apparently worked in the DA field for some time, and refereneces this experience frequently.
As should be evident from my above comments, I am dissapointed by this book. I would have better spent my time spending more money and purchasing a more widely respected text like that of Clemen (listed below). Overall I'd suggest readers avoid this book and instead purchase:
Smart Choices by Hammond, Keeney, Raiffa - very well written, concise book on making better decisions, for the layman. Great examples, thoroughly explained, with useful analogies and applications of the important concepts.
Making Hard Decisions by Clemen - a much more scholarly text used in many Decision Analysis courses.
Rating:
Summary: Weak and Disappointing Introduction to Decision Analysis
Review: Overall I think this is poor introduction to Decision Analysis. The author gives a sketchy explanation of key concepts such as how to draw influence diagrams and decision trees. He emphasis their importance several times, but never gives a thorough explanation of how to create them, with insufficient examples. What is TRULY bothersome is some of the exercises in the early chapters ask the reader to create these diagrams, without the "how to draw them" part ever having been explained! Other issues I have with this book: - several typos and grammatical errors
- some of the examples appear to have been "borrowed" from many other (better) books, such as those listed below.
- there is a shortage of concrete examples, and the few examples given are not sufficiently explained. I was not able to follow the analysis process of how to apply some of the concepts explained in the book, specifically on creating influence diagrams
- the author's arrogance is insulting. At the beginning of each chapter he quotes an eminent figure. Some of the quotes come from Einstein, Sun Tzu, Theodore Roosevel. The author has the audacity to put one of his OWN QUOTES in this same space reserved for these other renowned people.
- the author's website, to which he references frequently, was not active every time I checked (last checked July 2004).
- dissapointing explanation of Net Present Value (NPV), an important concept when evaluating consequences of many financial decisions
- very poor explanation of discount rates, another important term
- glossary fails to list important terms, such as discount rate The writing was OK. The book does provide a mediocre overview to Decision Analysis (DA). The author has apparently worked in the DA field for some time, and refereneces this experience frequently. As should be evident from my above comments, I am dissapointed by this book. I would have better spent my time spending more money and purchasing a more widely respected text like that of Clemen (listed below). Overall I'd suggest readers avoid this book and instead purchase: Smart Choices by Hammond, Keeney, Raiffa - very well written, concise book on making better decisions, for the layman. Great examples, thoroughly explained, with useful analogies and applications of the important concepts. Making Hard Decisions by Clemen - a much more scholarly text used in many Decision Analysis courses.
Rating:
Summary: Hands-on, helpful, comprehensive -- and recommended
Review: Skinner covers a lot of territory in this book, hitting important elements of real-world decision-making. I recommend this for new practitioners and managers, or anyone else who wants a comprehensive overview of decision analysis in the business environment. Rather than focus only on number-crunching such as cost-benefit or cash flow projection, he emphasizes decision process, scaleability, and decision quality -- topics we don't hear about often enough. For instance, Skinner provides practical checklists and tools such as one for assessing the quality of a decision (p. 96). Additionally, the book functions as an encyclopedia of decision methods, with concise explanations of influence diagrams, Monte Carlo, probability, etc.
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