Facts and fictions about the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Despite the many books and journal articles that have appeared about the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), some important misconceptions about AHP remain. This paper discusses issues which underlie these misconceptions, including the cause and significance of ‘rank reversals’, situations allowing or preventing rank reversals, the constraint of a 9 point scale, the roles of redundancy, intransitivities, and inconsistencies, the accommodation of objectivity and uncertainty, the similarities of AHP and Multi Attribute Utility Theory, and opportunities to combine MCDM methodologies in real world decisions.