Distilling expert information from an expert judgement matrix

In this paper, we discuss in detail a method of distilling expert information from an inconsistent expert judgement matrix, which is used as a calculating tool in AHP (analytic hierarchy process). The main idea is that we can always find a specific combination of n − 1 elements from the inconsistent matrix that is thought to be mostly accurate, to construct a brand new matrix, which is completely consistent and has the most similarity to the original one. A computer program is used to locate such a combination. Finally, we demonstrate the method with an example.