Value-Focused Thinking: a chapter-by-chapter summary
This is a chapter-by-chapter summary of Value-Focusing Thinking by Ralph Keeney. The hope of this summary is to present most of the value of reading the book in a tiny fraction of the space. Reading the original chapters will provide additional elaboration, examples, and secondary concepts, but unlike the textbooks I've reviewed before only those interested in learning more should need to read the full chapters.
I'll state my basic impression of the whole book up front: it is a very useful book for the 'soft half' of decision analysis, by which I mean framing problems, understanding objectives, and interacting with humans. For a more general and individual-focused introduction to decision analysis, I recommend Smart Choices (which Keeney was a coauthor on); VFT appears primarily targeted at facilitators and contains much focused material not in Smart Choices. I will not suggest targeted reading for particular readers, as Keeney does that well.
The first two paragraphs of the preface seem worth quoting in full:
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