Talk:Trade study

"This paper"?
Seems odd that this article references itself as "this paper". I'm not sure if I should fix that or not but it seems wrong to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.57.178.107 (talk) 07:29, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That's because the whole article was copied and pasted with minor adaptations from this paper, in which that phrase makes sense. I found it by doing a Google search for the longer phrase "there would be no need for this paper", which I found in the article's edit history using WikiBlame. (That seems to be a commonly used phrase, but the paper in question was on the first page of the results.) I was going to report this as a copyright violation, but it turns out that the user who created this article appears to be the first author and copyright holder of that paper, so it's fine—he's released the text he copied and adapted under CC BY-SA 3.0 & GFDL by so copying it here. That paper is the third item in the references section, too. (The link was dead, though, so I fixed it.) – PointyOintment ❬t &amp; c❭ 21:10, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Add info on table method
The article discusses a method of doing a trade study where the weights of the variables are represented by formulae. I haven't seen that method before, but I think it looks at least broadly analogous to the method I've seen before,* which is done by creating a table with the options on one axis and the factors and their weights as well as the options' total scores on the other. (Examples:  ) I think the article should cover that method also. I might write something about it, but I probably won't get around to it.


 * It looks at first glance to me like the formula method could more easily handle situations where one variable's value affects weighting of other factors, or where the score is dependent on a relationship between multiple factors, not just the total of each factor. On the other hand, the table method is more visual and easier to understand at a glance. – PointyOintment ❬t &amp; c❭ 21:32, 15 February 2020 (UTC)