Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has been one of the fastest growing problem areas in many disciplines. The central problem is how to evaluate a set of alternatives in terms of a number of criteria. Although this problem is very relevant in practice, there are few methods available and their quality is hard to determine. Thus, the question `Which is the best method for a given problem?' has become one of the most important and challenging ones. This is exactly what this book has as its focus and why it is important. The author extensively compares, both theoretically and empirically, real-life MCDM issues and makes the reader aware of quite a number of surprising `abnormalities' with some of these methods. What makes this book so valuable and different is that even though the analyses are rigorous, the results can be understood even by the non-specialist. Audience: Researchers, practitioners, and students; it can be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate or graduate courses in business and engineering.
Dr. Evangelos Triantaphyllou did all his graduate studies at Penn State University from 1984 to 1990. While at Penn State, he earned a Dual M.S. in Environment and Operations Research (OR) (in 1985), an M.S. in Computer Science (in 1988) and a Dual Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (in 1990). His Ph.D. dissertation was related to data mining by means of optimization approaches. Since the spring of 2005 he is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, LA, U.S. Before that, he had served for 11 years as an Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor in the Industrial Engineering Department at the same university. He has also served for one year as an Interim Associate Dean for the College of Engineering at LSU.
His research is focused on decision-making theory and applications, data mining and knowledge discovery, and the interface of operations research and computer science. Since the years he was a graduate student, he has developed new methods for data mining and knowledge discovery and has also explored some of the most fundamental and intriguing subjects in decision making. In 1999 he has received the prestigious IIE (Institute of Industrial Engineers), OR Division, Research Award for his research contributions in the above fields. In 2005 he received an LSU Distinguished Faculty Award as recognition of his research, teaching, and service accomplishments. Some of his graduate students have also received awards and distinctions including the Best Dissertation Award at LSU for Science, Engineering and Technology for the year 2003.
In 2000 Dr. Triantaphyllou published a bestseller book on multi-criteria decision-making. Besides the previous monograph on decision making , he has co-edited two books. One on data mining by means of rule induction (2006) and another one on the mining of enterprise data (2008). In the summer of 2010 he published a monograph on data mining and knowledge discovery by means of logic-based methods.
He always enjoys doing research with his students from which he has learned / learning a lot. He has received teaching awards and distinctions. His research has been funded by federal and state agencies, and the private sector. He has extensively published in some of the top refereed journals and made numerous presentations in national and international conferences.
Dr. Triantaphyllou has a strong inter-disciplinary background. He has always enjoyed organizing multi-disciplinary teams of researchers and practitioners with complementary expertise. These groups try to comprehensively attack some of the most urgent problems in the sciences and engineering. He is a strong believer of the premise that the next round of major scientific and engineering discoveries will come from the work of such inter-disciplinary groups. More details of his work can be found in his web site ( http://www.csc.lsu.edu/trianta ).
