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	UTILITY
		The fundamental assumption in UTILITY THEORY is that the decision maker always chooses the alternative for which the expected value of the utility (EXPECTED utility) is maximum.
		A UTILITY function is the rule by which this assignment is done and depends on the preferences of the individual decision maker.
		Utility theory provides a basis for the assignment of utilities to consequences by formulating necessary and sufficient conditions to satisfy (i) and (ii).
	pespmc1.vub.ac.be /ASC/UTILITY.html (597 words)

	Utility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Utility was originally viewed as a measurable quantity, so that it would be possible to measure the utility of each individual in the society with respect to each good available in the society, and to add these together to yield the total utility of all people with respect to all goods in the society.
		A utility of 100 units towards a cup of vodka is twice as desirable as a cup of coffee with a utility level of 50 units.
		A utility of 100 towards an ice-cream is not twice as desirable as a utility of 50 towards candy.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Utility (1180 words)

	Marginalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		The theory of marginal utility was independently developed around 1870 by William Stanley Jevons in England, Carl Menger in Austria and Leon Walras in Switzerland.
		Those who endorse subjective value theory (including mainstream modern economists) believe it is a refutation of intrinsicist value theories, such as the labor theory of value, which is a cornerstone of Marxism.
		Marginal utility, or marginal benefit, is the additional utility (satisfaction or benefit) that a consumer derives from an additional unit of a commodity or service (output).
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Marginal_utility (1465 words)

	Utility Theory - UTILITY THEORY, UTILITY THEORY AND DEMAND, UTILITY FUNCTIONS, ASSUMPTIONS ON PREFERENCES
		Thus, utility theory assumes that any decision is made on the basis of the utility maximization principle, according to which the best choice is the one that provides the highest utility (satisfaction) to the decision maker.
		Utility theory is often used to explain the behavior of individual consumers.
		For instance, a utility of 100 units towards a cup of tea is twice as desirable as a cup of coffee with a utility level of 50 units.
	www.referenceforbusiness.com /management/Tr-Z/Utility-Theory.html (905 words)

	Utility article - Utility public utility computer software economics indifference curve - What-Means.com (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		This conception of utility as a measurable quantity that could be aggregated across individuals is called 'cardinal utility'.
		In game theory, utility is represented as a function representing the anticipated payoff of each player corresponding to their selected strategy.
		The correspondence of utility and preference is denoted by:
	www.what-means.com /encyclopedia/Utility (928 words)

	Utility -- Facts, Info, and Encyclopedia article (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		The doctrine of (Doctrine that the useful is the good; especially as elaborated by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill; the aim was said to be the greatest happiness for the greatest number) utilitarianism saw the maximisation of utility as a moral criterion for the organisation of society.
		Utility theory assumes that humankind is (Click link for more info and facts about rational) rational.
		If the value of the utility function were to be, e.g., doubled, squared, or subjected to any other strictly (Click link for more info and facts about monotonic) monotonically increasing function, it would still describe the same preferences.
	www.absoluteastronomy.com /encyclopedia/u/ut/utility.htm (1686 words)

	Utility Theory (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		Utility Theory was proposed by Bernoulli to describe how people think and behave (e.g., when they make the St. Petersberg Paradox choice), but many of the subsequent versions (including von Neumann and Morgenstern's) were initially proposed as normative, optimally rational models that might or might not describe actual behavior.
		Stable, sensible utility functions are obtained in these studies and individual differences between decision makers are often interpretable in terms of the curves: gamblers exhibit a convex (risk-seeking) form of the curve; staid, conservative decision makers usually exhibit concave (risk-averse) curves.
		Utility Theory is not exactly correct, but it is a good approximate description and it is general, elegant, and mathematically useful.
	psych.colorado.edu /~psyc4135/JDM_Notes12.html (1269 words)

	Intuitions about declining marginal utility
		The measure of declining marginal utility was the utility difference between the utilities of the highest and lowest pairs of quantities of goods, e.g., the utility difference between 50 and 60 years life expectancy minus the utility difference between 75 and 85 years.
		Utility of this interval was larger when it was in the bottom third than in the middle third, and this was true for both goods (mean difference 4.3, t = 3.51, p =.0010) and ratings (mean 6.69, t = 4.08, p =.0002; the two kinds of judgment did not differ).
		Utility of this interval was larger when it was in the bottom third than in the middle third, and this was true for both goods (mean difference 5.5, t = 4.76, p =.0000) and ratings (mean 7.37, t = 10.13, p =.0000).
	www.sas.upenn.edu /~baron/jg.htm (7131 words)

	Learn more about Utility in the online encyclopedia. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		In economics, utility is a measure of the satisfaction gained from the consumption of a "package" of goods and services.
		The concept of utility is a measure of happiness or satisfaction.
		It is applied by economists in such topics as the indifference curve, which measures the combination of a basket of commodities that an individual or a community requests at a given level(s) of satisfaction.
	www.onlineencyclopedia.org /u/ut/utility.html (950 words)

	[No title]
		Both the classical school is general and its specialized variant, the marginal utility school, in particular, take as their common point of departure the traditional psychology of the early nineteenth century hedonists, which is accepted as a matter of course or of common notoriety and is held quite uncritically.
		The distinctive character given to this system of theory by these postulates and by the point of view resulting from their acceptance may be summed up broadly and concisely in saying that the theory is confined to the ground of sufficient reason instead of proceeding on the ground of efficient cause.
		The postulates of marginal utility, and the hedonistic preconceptions generally, fail at this point in that they confine the attention to such bearings of economic conduct as are conceived not to be conditioned by habitual standards and ideals and to have no effect in the way of habituation.
	www.efm.bris.ac.uk /het/veblen/margutil.txt (4101 words)

	Procrastination Theories
		The theory with the most support is Discounted Utility Theory, which is presented last.
		Discounted Utility Theory suggests, unsurprisingly, that we are more likely to pursue goals or tasks that are pleasurable and that we are likely to attain.
		Of note, Discounted Utility Theory suggests that many of the previous theories were right, but only in part.
	www.ucalgary.ca /~steel/procrastinus/theory/theory.html (1244 words)

	John T. Langton : Utility Theory (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		Utility theory is used in decision analysis to determine the EU (estimated utility) of some action based on the U (utility) of its possible result(s).
		utility function is when there is a lottery (uncertainty involed), value function is when you're evaluating the worth of actual states.
		A value for backgammon however is a utility function since the rolling of the dice brings in uncertainty, probability, and chance.
	www.porcelainrocks.com /~psyc/ai/decision/utility.htm (1267 words)

	Decision Modeling
		This is a purely subjective call, of course, which is why the utility function must be tailor-made for every decision problem where aversion to or preference for risk taking exists.
		So if utilities are substituted for monetary values in the analysis, the action alternative recommended by the decision model will reflect the decision maker's risk preference.
		Utility Theory - University of Colorado at Boulder - Psychology
	groups.msn.com /DecisionModeling/utilitytheory.msnw (903 words)

	John T. Langton : Utility Theory
		Utility theory is used in decision analysis to determine the EU (estimated utility) of some action based on the U (utility) of its possible result(s).
		utility function is when there is a lottery (uncertainty involved), value function is when you're evaluating the worth of actual states.
		A value for backgammon however is a utility function since the rolling of the dice brings in uncertainty, probability, and chance.
	www.cs.brandeis.edu /~psyc/ai/decision/utility.htm (1267 words)

	Jevons on Utility (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		Utility may be treated* as a quantity of two dimensions, one dimension consisting in the quantity of the commodity, and another in the intensity of the effect produced upon the consumer.
		The degree of utility is thus properly measured by the height of a very narrow rectangle corresponding to a very small quantity of food, which theoretically ought to be infinitely small.
		An illustrative problem, involving questions of prospective utility and probability, is found in the case of a vessel at sea, which is insufficiently victualled for the probable length of the voyage to the nearest port.
	www.eco.utexas.edu /faculty/Cleaver/368jevonsutility2.htm (7842 words)

	Utility Theory III
		= $162.89 and, using the logarithmic Utility Function, we associate a Utility of log(162.89) = 5.09 whereas, for the +25%/-10% scenario, the Expected Value is 206.10 and the associated Utility is log(206.10) = 5.33 so we've assigned a greater Utility to the latter option.
		So the Utility we attach to the guaranteed $162.89 is 5.09 and the Utility we attach to the +25%/-10% option is 5.19 so the latter is better, eh?
		If the gain, for tossing a head, is 21.15% then the Expected Utility for a +21.15%/-10% option is 12.8, the same as the guaranteed Utility, so you'd be indifferent to one or the other.
	www.gummy-stuff.org /utility-theory-3.htm (1327 words)

	Computer science faces decision theory TRN 072600
		Decision theory determines the probabilities and utility, or resulting value, of potential outcomes, and uses that information to figure out the best solution for a given problem.
		For example, a system administrator could use decision theory tools to calculate the probabilities of a system crashing at various settings and then weigh those against the utility of the settings as measured by end-user satisfaction in order to to derive the optimal setting.
		For example, it's virtually impossible to measure utility for end-users of a system because the system's utility for one person is not necessarily the same as for another, he said.
	www.trnmag.com /Stories/072600/Decision_Theory_072600.html (829 words)

	Supplement on vNM utility theory
		Thus we are arbitrarily specifying the "utility" of an apple to be 100 and that of a pear to be 10.
		In general, if U(x) is greater than U(y), then the utility of any binary lottery [px, (1-p)y] is that point on the scale which is up from U(y) by a distance of p times the difference between U(x) and U(y).
		The utility of a lottery will be equal to it's "expected utility," that is, the weighted sum of the utilities of the prizes, with the weights provided by the probabilities.
	www.uwm.edu /~sensat/courses/941rawls/notes05s.html (1064 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		By means of the utility theory, expert preference about the influence of feature level on the cost can be expressed in a simple mathematical form.
		For triangular membership function, the minimum and maximum utility values of each level among five experts are the two bottom points, and the mean of the five utility values is considered to be the top point, the membership grades of 1.
		The fuzzy theory is used to handle the incomplete and uncertain information at the composite structure design stage; the utility theory makes it possible to combine different attributes.
	ww2.cs.fsu.edu /~wankzhao/costpaper.doc (4419 words)

	Compstat91
		These generalized theories have been shown to be capable of accounting for most of the well-known violations of EU theory including the Allais paradox (Quiggin 1985, Segal 1987), the common ratio effect and the preference reversal effect (Karni and Safra 1987).
		The central observation is that RDEU theory may be regarded as "expected utility with respect to a transformed probability distribution." Under appropriate conditions, a change in the original probability distribution, such as a shift to the right, will result in a similar change in the transformed probability distribution.
		Rank dependent utility theory is a generalization of Expected Utility theory which does not rely on the axiom of Independence of unrelated outcomes and hence overcomes many of the criticisms of Allais and others.
	www.uq.edu.au /economics/johnquiggin/JournalArticles91/Compstat91.html (4293 words)

	[No title]
		However this theory was restricted to gambles with no more than two nonzero payoffs, and it included a number of seemingly ad hoc editing rules to avoid implications that were considered both irrational and empirically wrong.
		Modern Theories and Paradoxes During the 1980s, a number of investigators converged on an approach that used a weighting function of probability but did not have the problems of prospect theory (See reviews by Quiggin, 1993 and Luce, 2000).
		Expected utility theory was considered a new definition of rationality that might explain the St. Petersburg paradox and also describe why different people might choose differently.
	psych.fullerton.edu /mbirnbaum/papers/Paradox11.doc (2189 words)

	Expected Utility Theory
		Antecedents, subjective expected utility, and behavior: a panel study of adolescent cigarette ….
		Relationship between subjective expected utility and behavior: a longitudinal study of adolescent ….
		Under stochastic dominance Choquet-expected utility and anticipated utility are identical.
	expected-utility-theory.behaviouralfinance.net (939 words)

	[No title]
		Preferences are mathematically represented by subjective utility functions, subject to certain constraints (e.g., the expected utility of one outcome is greater than that of a second only if the agent prefers the first to the second).
		The fundamental claim of decision theory is that a rational decision is one with the highest subjective expected utility (there may be more than one due to ties).
		Tversky's and Kahneman's prospect theory, the pioneer behavioral account, replaces utilities and probabilities with value functions and decision weights, both of which are constructed to capture the behavioral evidence.
	www.ou.edu /ouphil/faculty/chris/crittex/rat-fixed2.doc (2531 words)

	Theory of Utility Scribe notes (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		It is appreciable that with so few assumptions (free disposal, continuity and differentiability of utility functions, and a rational preference relation) we were able to show that the prices will be proportional to the ratio of change of utility and the change of quantity.
		The above arguments reinforces the notion that value of a commodity is proportional to the ratio of change of utility and the change in quantity that forces that change in utility i.e.
		Since the marginal utility of water is much smaller than that of gold in the present state, the slope of the graph for gold is much more than for water.
	www.cse.iitd.ernet.in /~rahul/cs905/lecture6 (972 words)

	Springer WienNewYork - Mathematical Utility Theory (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-02)
		Their contributions represent new research in the field of mathematical utility theory with an emphasis on its applications in the social sciences.
		Readers of this volume can inform themselves about novel results in mathematical utility theory and their significance for the social sciences.
		The contributions cover a spectrum of fields from topological methods in utility theory to the application of experimental methods to utility theory.
	www.springer.at /main/book.jsp?bookID=3-211-83223-8&categoryID=5 (317 words)

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