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Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks

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Professor Ayyub's book contributes to the literature on expert opinion in several unique ways. First, it is built on the philosophical and epistemological foundations of recognizing and categorizing what is not known. Some may consider this a foundation built on sand. I consider it a foundation based on understanding the weaknesses in knowledge before we build. Only from this perspective can we critically evaluate what we think we know. Second, with the recognition of the wide variety of types of ignorance, one can seek to find the most appropriate mathematical representation for the ignorance. This approach is contrary to the tradition in expert elicitation of seeing all ignorance as representable by traditional probability theory.

The book provides a wide view of the topic, as useful background information and context for the subject, before focusing on the details needed by the reader for a variety of practical applications. Expert opinion is used by decision-makers, for example, in performing technology assessment to determine the direction of investment in costly research and development. Properly elicited, analyzed, and interpreted, expert opinion - subjectivity - can be as useful as objective data in decision-making for engineers and managers.