Hi Seyed,

There are several software available. Find here some pointers. Best is to contact the authors if you are interested in their method.

- Rough Sets: http://www.lcb.uu.se/tools/rosetta/#functionality

- FlowSort  sorting method (based on Promethee methodology): www.smart-picker.com  --> there is a trial version and also research licences

- Tomaso method (http://public.telecom-bretagne.eu/~pmeyer//software/tomaso/tomaso_tutorial.html)

- SMAA (http://www.inescc.pt/~ewgmcda/SW_CSMAA.pdf)

- FINCLASS (Multicriteria Decision Support for Financial Classification Problems) (in Newsletter, Series 3, No. 3, Spring 2001): http://www.cs.put.poznan.pl/ewgmcda/pdf/SWFinclass.pdf

Other references:

http://www.cs.put.poznan.pl/ewgmcda/pdf/SW_IRIS.pdf

http://www.cogentus.co.uk/products/

Best wishes,

Philippe

Thanks for answering.

Hi Seyed

You can test with SIMUS, a new method based on Linear Programming and that gives two identical solutions for a problem

If you want to test it I can send you the software

[email protected]

Nolberto

Nolberto Munier

Can we use SIMUS for multi criteria Classification (sorting) problems?

Dear Seyed

Thank you for your question, but sorting and classification are not the same, therefore, before giving you an answer about SIMUS I need to know what you interpret as sorting

Classification is the general term; however, ‘sorting requires the addition of user preferences to the classification and that there should be consistency within the preference’ (Greco et al, 2001)

I don’t really know if SIMUS can perform sorting, let me investigate, however, according to the above definition and considering that it requires user’s preferences, which are absent in SIMUS, I am not sure, and I don’t want to mislead you.

There are indeed user’s preferences in SIMUS but as post-result not ante-result, and this is the reason for my doubt

Dear Dr. Nolberto Munier

I think Classification is the general term. As far as I know most of MADM methods can be considered as sorting methods. I think "sorting" is a branch of "classification". "clustering" is also a branch of "classification". Please confirm if you agree with me.

Thanks and regards,

Emamat

I don't mean all MADM methods. I mean MADM methods like ELECTRE-TRI, FlowSort... Not ranking methods..

Seyed

I am not sure. There are problems that have to be sorted in a certain way and I don't think that this can be done by many of them

Dear Seyed

I was thinking about your question and I decided to sort a series of alternatives, each one with a cluster of sub alternatives. The challenge is:

1. Within each alternative cluster, select a certain number of sub alternatives according to the DM wishes

2. Rank all sub alternatives.

I developed a simple example with two alternatives and with a cluster of three sub alternatives each

I applied the Solver add-in in Excel and I got an optimal answer, that is, for each cluster the two best sub alternatives are sorted