Article ID: | iaor200945310 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 4 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 156 |
End Page Number: | 166 |
Publication Date: | Sep 2007 |
Journal: | Decision Analysis |
Authors: | Pleguezuelo Rafael Herreras, Prez Jos Garca, Rambaud Salvador Cruz, van Dorp Johan Ren |
Keywords: | probability |
Recent advances in computation technology for decision/simulation and uncertainty analyses have revived interest in the triangular distribution and its use to describe uncertainty of bounded input phenomena. The trapezoidal distribution is a generalization of the triangular distribution that allows for the specification of the modal value by means of a range of values rather than a single point estimate. Whereas the trapezoidal and the triangular distributions are restricted to linear geometric forms in the successive stages of the distribution, the generalized trapezoidal (GT) distribution allows for a nonlinear behavior at its tails and a linear incline (or decline) in the central stage. In this paper we develop two novel elicitation procedures for the parameters of a special case of the GT family by restricting ourselves to a uniform (horizontal) central stage in accordance with the central stage of the original trapezoidal distribution.