Ranking U.S. Army Generals of the Twentieth Century Using the Group Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The group analytic hierarchy process (GAHP) is a mathematically based decision making tool that allows groups of individuals to participate in the decision making process. In this thesis, we use the GAHP and the expert opinions of 10 professional and amateur military historians to rank seven U.S. Army generals of the 20th Century. We use two methods to determine the priority vectors: the traditional eigenvector method and the recently introduced interval linear programming method. We consider the effects of removing outlier data and compare the rankings obtained by each method.