Decision Analysis

• Engineers in any field, including mechanical, electrical, civil, and environmental
• Aspiring data scientists, data analysts, and market analysts
• Anyone who needs to make highly consequential decisions or inform solutions in the face of uncertainty or multiple and conflicting objectives

• Decision Analysis Certificate from Cornell University's College of Engineering
• 70 Professional Development Hours (7 CEUS)

As you begin framing decisions, the complexities quickly reveal that defining the problem is the problem. How do your choices in defining the problem impact your discovery of innovative solutions? This program will provide you with a framework to structure the way you think about decisions that are complicated by uncertainty, complexity, and competing objectives. Creative problem framing and the generation of decision alternatives is key when confronting highly complex and uncertain decisions.

This certificate program will provide context for how your values, objectives, and perspective can frame how you consider decisions in real-world contexts. You will create and navigate simple, discrete choices using decision trees to gain insights. With this foundation, you will dig deeper into what it means to balance the subjectivity of decision making while trying to maintain objectivity. You will investigate how biases, heuristics, risk attitudes, and other complexities add layers of consideration to your decisions. Using an optimization-based simulation, this program provides more context on decision theory that leads to modern discoveries. Bringing in real-world examples and case studies, you will explore developing alternatives and trade-offs using Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, you will gain contextual practice in a simulation environment using the simulation tool Rhodium.

As you progress in this certificate program, you will be better equipped with the concepts and tools you'll need for framing and analyzing complex decisions. By the end, you will be able to implement complex simulation tools that equip you with everything you need, from standard decision-framing tools to the most innovative options available.

You will be most successful in this program if you have an introductory knowledge of probability and statistics.

For the best experience in this program it is recommended to take these courses in the order that they appear.