The Tournament Tree Method for preference elicitation in Multi-criteria decision-making Article Swipe

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José Rui Figueira ·

YOU? · · 2025 · Open Access · · DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2510.08197

Pairwise comparison methods, such as Fuzzy Preference Relations and Saaty's Multiplicative Preference Relations, are widely used to model expert judgments in multi-criteria decision-making. However, their application is limited by the high cognitive load required to complete $m(m-1)/2$ comparisons, the risk of inconsistency, and the computational complexity of deriving consistent value scales. This paper proposes the Tournament Tree Method (TTM), a novel elicitation and evaluation framework that overcomes these limitations. The TTM requires only $m-1$ pairwise comparisons to obtain a complete, reciprocal, and consistent comparison matrix. The method consists of three phases: (i) elicitation of expert judgments using a reduced set of targeted comparisons, (ii) construction of the consistent pairwise comparison matrix, and (iii) derivation of a global value scale from the resulting matrix. The proposed approach ensures consistency by design, minimizes cognitive effort, and reduces the dimensionality of preference modeling from $m(m-1)/2$ to $m$ parameters. Furthermore, it is compatible with the classical Deck of Cards method, and thus it can handle interval and ratio scales. We have also developed a web-based tool that demonstrates its practical applicability in real decision-making scenarios.

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Type: preprint
Language: en
Landing Page: http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08197
PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08197
OA Status: green
OpenAlex ID: https://openalex.org/W4416383421

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2510.08197

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Title: The Tournament Tree Method for preference elicitation in Multi-criteria decision-making

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Type: preprint

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Language: en

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Publication year: 2025

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Publication date: 2025-10-09

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Authors: José Rui Figueira

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Landing page: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08197

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PDF URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08197

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