[NLA] Evaluation and Decision Making

[hforster]

There have been many good exchanges about ROI.   I would like to suggest
that there are other terms which put a new perspectives on the idea.
For example cost-benefit ratio.  This is again a term that was first
developed in the business world.  Both ROI and cost-benefit are ideas
used to make choices between alternative placements of resources.

To use an inflammatory term, these are all capitalistic concepts. I feel
that pure capitalism is a basic truism what ever -ism it is embedded
in.  Most  allies of the U.S. are capitalists, but the make their
decision in different ways.  That is why I too would like to have Tom's
insight into some of these global concepts.

Many of the issues that underlie this discussion are directed toward
improving the quality of live of the students.  This leads to another
term that may be related to this discussion - "Quality of Life".   Some
years ago I was doing some reading in the use of the term "Quality of
Life" in decision making.  As I recall I found great formalism in
defining and using the term in Canada and I believe Sweden.  It may be
instructive to see how these capitalistic systems apply social concepts
to decision making processes.

There is another context in which such issues have been raised and that
is in System Dynamics previously called Industrial Dynamics.  This idea
was developed by an American, Jay Forrester.  As I understand from
lurking on his list also, System Dynamics has a large base of
application in analysis and decision making in Europe.

The concepts of System Dynamics are foreign to our thinking and require
some effort to follow.
There are many examples available.  The most extensive is probably an
old book by Meadows and Meadows called "Limits to Growth".   One of the
factors that they analyze is "Quality of Life".




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