How to make Right Decisions by "C" of 'Introduction to Algorithms-CLRS'

I find that I don’t usually get to choose the “right point in time” to make a decision. But I’m going to outline a simple, quantitative decision procedure that I’ve used to make important decisions, and it’s what I recommend to my students. It’s how my coauthors and I decided to choose MIT Press as our publisher for Introduction to Algorithms, and it’s how my wife and I decided that I would take the faculty position at Dartmouth College.

This procedure is for a situation in which you have to decide between or among a number of candidates—in my case, publishers and job offers.

First, list out all the criteria that you are considering. Give each criterion a weight and, for ease, make the weights add to 100.

Next, for each candidate, give it a score in each criterion between 0 and the weight of that criterion. For example, when we were choosing publishers, we gave proximity a weight of 5 (out of 100). The score for MIT Press was 5 out of 5 since their office was literally one block from my apartment. We were also considering a publisher based in California. I don’t remember its proximity score, but it was probably 1 out of 5. (0 would have been for a publisher on another continent.)

Next, add up the scores for each candidate. You’ll get a number from 0 to 100 for each candidate. Presumably, you won’t see 0 (why are you even considering this candidate?) or 100 (why isn’t this decision a no-brainer?).

You’re not done, however. You will very possibly realize that you need to adjust the weights and/or scores. Perhaps you weighted one criterion too lightly and another too heavily. Change the weights and scores, and re-add each candidate’s scores.

Iterate as needed, until you feel like you got it right.

Chances are that you’ll end up deciding what you wanted to decide in the first place. But here’s the real benefit: you’ll know why you made that decision. 

And knowing why you decided for the winner will help you live with the decision later on. Because there will be times when you second-guess yourself. I have found that remembering why I decided to take the Dartmouth position helped me get through the tough times.

- Thomas Cormen