Decision Tree for Decision Making
We make a lot of decisions in our daily lives, some that have huge impacts to our future, and others that we hardly notice deciding on. When there is a lot on the line, or we have multiple people with conflicting decisions, its helpful to have a few frameworks on hand to help make the best choice with the information on hand.
Pros/Cons Table
An extremely common framework to help make decisions is a pro’s cons table. A large benefit is we shift away from the motional feeling of the options, to the specific positives/negatives of the solution Its easy for other people to add their perspective to the impacts of choosing one of the options
| Decision Point | Pro | Con |
|---|---|---|
| Option 1 | ||
| Option 2 |
A major drawback of this table is it is only helpful at looking at a snapshot in time for decision making. Often the best decision today can turn into the worst if the environment our choices are in changes. If the decision is important enough, taking into account environment changes against decisions can be a helpful exercise.
Decision Tree
A decision tree allows us to map our options against possible future environmental states. With this type of planning, we can see how a decision today affects us a week, year or decade later.
For example: Let’s say that you are making a decision to switch from biking to work to riding a bus every day. You are low on cash so you sell your bike for a bus pass for the year. This bus plan works well for the first few months, but then your city bus drivers go on strike for a week. What do you do? How do you get to work?
This simple example shows that there are multiple factors that can impact a decision way after the decision has been made. How can we take these external factors into account?
One beautiful model for this is a Decision Tree.
For our lazy commuter, their decision tree could look as follows.
In the tree above, you can see a couple of shapes, which are as follows:
- square boxes for decisions you can make
- circles for different states
- arrows showing the path to each
With each circle path, you can state the possibility of an event happening (lets say that the chance of a bus strike is guestimated at a 5% chance). you can also highlight your decision points after certain events happen.