SquidMat
These contents are extracted (and revised) from the WINHLP32 help file that comes packaged with SquidMat for Windows. WINHLP32 files are no longer supported by Windows, so I posted the information here.
Although the information applies specifically to SquidMat for Windows, the basic functionality is the same for SquidMat Online. So it's useful for both.
Program Description
SquidMat was designed as a replacement decision-matrix application for the CAS³ application DECMAT. My intent was to
(1) provide a simpler and, I think, more useful analysis and
(2) upgrade its user-interface features.
The program compares two or more courses of action based on two or more evaluation criteria. The user arranges the evaluation criteria in descending order of importance and tells the program how much more important each criterion is than the next lower criterion. These importance ratings are used to calculate weights for each criterion.
SquidMat takes user-supplied values for each course-of-action/criterion combination and converts them to standardized scores with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. Using the criterion weights, the program calculates weighted sums for each course of action. The course of action with the highest weighted sum is considered to be the best.
The image below shows you a completed decision matrix in SquidMat, with an Evaluation Criteria form above and a Sensitivity Analysis window below it. It has three courses of action (data rows) and three evaluation criteria (data columns).
The minimum number of courses of action is two. Anything less isn't a decision. The minimum number of evaluation criteria (the bases on which to compare courses of action) is also two. If there were only one, you wouldn't need a decision matrix. You'd just choose the course of action with the best value in that criterion. (No need for weighting and summing, etc.)
The table of contents at the top of this page links to more information and instructions for the desktop version of the program.