A SIMULATION-BASED EVALUATION OF THE APPROXIMATE AND THE EXACT EIGENVECTOR METHODS EMPLOYED IN AHP

Thr Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a popular multi-criteria decis ion making method. It provides ratio-scale measurements of the priorit ies of elements in various levels of a hierarchy. These priorities are obtained through pairwise comparisons of elements in one level with r eference to each element in the immediate higher level. Saaty has sugg ested two methods. viz., the approximate eigenvector method (AEV) and the exact eigenvector method (EEV) for calculating the priorities. Res earch on AHP has led to conflicting views on the use of these two meth ods. This payer presents a simulation analysis to evaluate them. The s imulation analysis uses the concept of approximating a continuous pair wise comparison (CPC) matrix by its closest discretized pairwise compa rison (DPC) matrix. This exercise supports Saaty's theoretical stateme nts and empirically concludes that the EEV method is to be preferred o ver the AEV method for the calculation of priority vectors.